lifornia 

onal 

iity 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


.N  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 


Women 

as 

World    Builders 

Studies  in 
Modern  Feminism 


BY 

FLOYD  DELL 


CHICAGO 

FORBES  AND  COMPANY 

1913 


COPYRIGHT.      1913,      BY 
FORBES    AND   COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

I     The  Feminist  Movement        ...  T 

II     Charlotte  Perkins  Oilman        .        .        .  ^S 

III     Emmeline  Pankhurst  and  Jane  Addams  SO 

IV     Olive  Schreiner  and  Isadora  Duncan  41 

V     Beatrice  Webb  and  Emma  Goldman    .  52 

VI      Margaret  Dreier  Robins        ...  65 

VII     Ellen    Key 76 

VIII     Freeworoen  and  Dora  Marsden     .        .  90 


161 '^'206 


Women  as  World  Builders 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

THE  feminist  movement  can  be  dealt 
with  in  two  ways :  it  can  be  treated  as 
a  sociological  abstraction,  and  discussed  at 
length  in  heavy  monographs;  or  it  can  be 
taken  as  the  simii  of  the  adion  of  a  lot  of 
women,  and  taken  account  of  in  the  lives  of 
individual  women.  The  latter  way  would 
be  called  "journalistic,"  had  not  the  late 
Wilham  James  used  it  in  his  "Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience."  It  is  a  method 
which  preserves  the  individual  flavor,  the 
personal  tone  and  color,  which,  after  all,  are 
the  hfe  of  any  movement.  It  is,  therefore, 
the  method  I  have  chosen  for  this  book. 

7 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

The  ten  women  whom  I  have  chosen  are 
representative:  they  give  the  quality  of  the 
woman's  movement  of  today.  Charlotte 
Perkins  Oilman  —  Jane  Addams  —  Emme- 
line  Pankhurst  —  Ohve  Schreiner  —  Isadora 
Duncan  —  Beatrice  Webb  —  Emma  Gold- 
man —  Margaret  Dreier  Robins  —  Ellen 
Key:  surely  in  these  women,*  if  anywhere, 
is  to  be  found  the  soul  of  modern  feminism ! 

One  may  inquire  why  certain  other  names 
are  not  included.  There  is  Maria  Montes- 
sori,  for  instance.  Her  ideas  on  the  educa- 
tion of  children  are  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance, and  their  difference  from  those  of 
Froebel  is  another  illustration  of  the  differ- 
ence between  the  practical  minds  of  women 
and  the  ideahstic  minds  of  men.  But  Ma- 
dame Montessori's  relation  to  the  feminist 
movement  is,  after  all,  ancillary.  A  tremen- 
dous lot  remains  to  be  done  in  the  way  of 
cooperation  for  the  management  of  house- 

*S«e  also   the  chapter    "Preewomaa   and  Dora    Uarsdnn." 

8 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

holds  and  the  education  of  children  before 
women  who  are  wives  and  mothers  will  be 
set  free  to  take  their  part  in  the  work  of  the 
outside  world.  But  it  is  the  setting  of  moth- 
ers free,  and  not  the  specific  kind  of  educa- 
tion which  their  children  are  to  receive,  which 
is  of  interest  to  us  here. 

Again,  one  may  inquire  why,  since  I  have 
not  bhnked  the  fact  that  the  feminist  move- 
ment is  making  for  a  revolution  of  values  in 
sex  —  why  1  have  not  included  any  woman 
who  has  distinguished  herself  by  defying 
antiquated  conventions  which  are  supposed 
to  rule  the  relations  of  the  sexes.  This 
requires  a  serious  answer.  The  adjustment 
of  one's  social  and  personal  relations,  so  far 
as  may  be,  to  accord  with  one's  own  convic- 
tions— that  is  not  feminism,  in  my  opinion: 
it  is  only  conmion  sense.  The  attempt  to 
discover  how  far  social  laws  and  traditions 
must  be  changed  to  accord  with  the  new 
position  of  women   in  society — that  is  a 

9 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

different  thing,  and  I  have  dealt  with  it  in 
the  paper  on  Ellen  Key. 

Another  reason  is  my  behef  that  it  is  with 
woman  as  producer  that  we  are  concerned 
in  a  study  of  feminism,  rather  than  with 
woman  as  lover.  The  woman  who  finds  her 
work  will  find  her  love  —  and  I  do  not  doubt 
will  cherish  it  bravely.  But  the  woman  who 
sets  her  love  above  everything  else  I  would 
gently  dismiss  from  our  present  considera- 
tion as  belonging  to  the  courtesan  type. 

It  is  not  very  well  understood  what  the 
courtesan  really  is,  and  so  I  pause  to  de- 
scribe her  briefly.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
transgress  certain  moral  customs  to  be  a 
courtesan ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  term  may 
accurately  be  applied  to  women  of  irre- 
proachable morals.  There  are  some  women 
who  find  their  destiny  in  the  bearing  and 
rearing  of  children,  others  who  demand  inde- 
pendent work  like  men,  and  still  others  who 
make  a  career  of  charming,  stimulating,  and 

10 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

comforting  men.  These  types,  of  course, 
merge  and  combine;  and  then  there  is  that 
vast  class  of  women  who  belong  to  none  of 
these  types  —  who  are  not  good  for  any- 
thing  I 

The  first  of  these  types  may  be  called  the 
mother  type,  the  second  the  worker  type, 
and  the  third  —  the  kind  of  women  which  is 
not  drawn  either  to  motherhood  or  to  work, 
but  which  is  greatly  attracted  to  men  and 
which  possesses  special  qualities  of  sympa- 
thy, stimulus,  and  charm,  and  is  content 
with  the  more  or  less  disinterested  exercise 
of  these  qualities  —  this  may  without  preju- 
dice be  called  the  courtesan  type.  It  will  be 
seen  that  the  courtesan  qualities  may  find 
play  as  well  within  legal  marriage  as  with- 
out, and  that  the  transgression  of  certain* 
moral  customs  is  only  incidental  to  the  type. 
Where  circumstances  encourage  it,  and 
where  the  moral  tradition  is  weakened  by 
experience  or  temperament,  the  moral  cus- 
11 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILJ3ERS 

toms  will  be  transgressed:  but  it  is  the 
human  qualities  of  companionship,  and  not 
the  economic  basis  of  that  companionship, 
which  is  the  essential  thing. 

When  a  girl  with  such  quahties  marries, 
and  she  usually  marries,  much  depends  upon 
the  character  of  her  husband.  If  her  hus- 
band appreciates  her,  if  he  does  not  expect 
her  to  give  up  her  career  of  charming 
straightway,  and  restrict  herself  to  cooking, 
sewing,  and  the  incubating  of  babies;  and, 
furthermore,  if  he  does  not  baffle  those  quali- 
ties in  his  wife  by  sheer  failure  in  his  own 
career,  then  there  is  a  happy  and  virtuous 
marriage.  Otherwise,  there  is  separation  or 
divorce,  and  the  woman  sometimes  becomes 
the  companion  of  another  man  without  the 
sanction  of  law.  But  she  has  been,  it  will 
be  perceived,  a  courtesan  all  along.  And 
while  I  do  not  wish  to  seem  to  deprecate  her 
comfortable  qualities,  she  does  not  come  in 
the  scope  of  this  inquiry. 

13 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

But  there  is  another  figure  which  I  wish 
I  had  been  able  to  include.  Not  wishing  to 
involve  my  publisher  in  a  libel  suit,  I  refrain. 
She  is  the  young  woman  of  the  leisure  class, 
whose  actions,  as  represented  to  us  in  the 
yellow  journals,  shock  or  divert  us,  accord- 
ing to  our  temperaments.  I  confess  to 
having  the  greatest  sympathy  for  her,  and 
in  her  endeavor  to  create  a  livelier,  a  more 
hilarious  and  human  morale,  she  is  doing,  I 
feel,  a  real  service  to  the  cause  of  women. 
Our  American  pseudo-aristocracy  is  capable 
to  teach  us,  despite  its  fantastic  excesses, 
how  to  play.  And  emancipation  from 
middle-class  standards  of  taste,  morality, 
and  intellect  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  a 
good  thing.  "  Too  many  cocktails,"  a  lady 
averred  to  me  the  other  day,  "  is  better  than 
smugness;  risque  conversation  far  better 
than  none  at  all."  And  that  celebrated 
*'  public-be-damned  "  attitude  of  the  pseudo- 
aristocracy  is  a  great  moral  improvement 
13 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

over  the  cowardly,  hysterical  fear  of  the 
neighbors  which  prevails  in  the  middle  class. 

But,  if  I  sympathize  with  the  "hell  rais- 
ing" tendency  —  no  other  phrase  describes 
it — of  the  young  woman  of  the  leisure  class, 
I  have  more  pity  than  sympathy  for  the 
one  who  is  trying  to  realize  the  ideal  of  the 
"salon."  For  she  must,  after  sad  expe- 
rience and  bitter  disillusionment,  be  content 
with  the  tawdry  activities  which,  relieved  by 
the  orgiastic  outbreaks  alluded  to  above, 
constitute  social  hfe  in  America. 

The  establishment  of  a  salon  is,  in  itself, 
a  healthful  ideal.  If  civilization  were  de- 
stroyed, and  rebuilt  on  any  plan,  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  salon  would  be  a  good  starting 
point  for  the  creation  of  a  medium  of  satisfy- 
ing social  intercourse.  Social  intercourse 
we  must  have,  or  the  best  of  us  lapse  into 
boorishness.  The  ego  only  properly  func- 
tions in  contact  with  other  and  various  egos. 
So  that,  in  any  case,  we  should  have  to  have 
14 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

gomething  in  the  nature  of  our  contempo- 
rary "society."  All  the  more  do  we  need 
"society"  at  present,  since  those  ancient 
institutions,  the  church  and  the  cafe,  have 
almost  entirely  lost  the  character  of  real 
social  centers. 

Recognizing  this  need,  and  supposing  the 
best  intentions  in  the  world,  what  can  people 
do  at  present  in  the  creation  of  a  "  society  " 
which  shall  be  useful  to  the  community  in- 
stead of  a  laughing  stock  for  the  intelligent  ? 

That  is  a  fair  question.  Many  an  ambi- 
tious and  idealistic  young  American  matron 
has  tried  to  solve  it.  She  has  found  that  the 
materials  were  a  little  scarce  —  the  people 
who  could  talk  brilliantly  are  very  rare.  But 
brilhancy  is  always  a  miracle,  and  it  can  be 
dispensed  with.  The  real  trouble  lies  else- 
where. 

The  fact  is  that  in  our  present  industrial 
system  the  need  for  social  life  is  in  inverse 
ratio  to  the  opportunity  for  it.  The  people 
15 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

who  need  social  intercourse  are  those  who  do 
hard  work.  The  people  who  have  most 
money  and  leisure,  the  most  opportunity  for 
social  life,  are  those  who  have  too  much  of  it, 
anyway.  Moreover — and  this  is  an  impor- 
tant point — no  one  profits  less  by  leisure 
and  money  than  those  who  have  a  great  deal 
of  it.  Consequently,  the  basis  of  "  society  " 
today  is  a  class  of  people  naturally  and  in- 
evitably inferior.  It  is  this  class  which 
dominates  "society,"  which  gives  the  tone, 
and  which  sets  the  standard.  So  long,  then, 
as  "society"  is  dominated  by  inferiors,  in- 
telligent men  and  women  will  not  be  inclined 
to  waste  what  time  they  have  for  social  inter- 
course in  such  stupid  activities  as  those  that 
"society"  can  furnish.  They  will  flock  by 
themselves,  and  if  they  become  undemocratic 
and  unsocial  as  a  result,  that  will  appear  to 
them  the  lesser  evil.  So  that,  however 
catholic  our  standards,  the  saloniere,  as  a 

16 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

bounden  failure,  has  no  place  in  this  tran- 
script of  feminism. 

One  thing  will  be  observed  with  regard  to 
these  following  papers  —  though  they  are 
imbued  with  an  intense  interest  in  women, 
they  are  devoid  of  the  spirit  of  Romance. 
I  mean  that  attitude  toward  woman  which 
accepts  her  sex  as  a  miraculous  justification 
for  her  existence,  the  belief  that  being  a 
woman  is  a  virtue  in  itself,  apart  from  the 
possession  of  other  qualities:  in  short, 
woman- worship.  The  reverence  for  woman 
as  virgin,  or  wife,  or  mother,  irrespective  of 
her  capacities  as  friend  or  leader  or  servant 
—  that  is  Romance.  It  is  an  attitude  which, 
discovered  in  the  Middle  Ages,  has  added  a 
new  glamour  to  existence.  To  woman  as  a 
superior  being,  a  divinity,  one  may  look  for 
inspiration  —  and  receive  it.  For  those  who 
cannot  be  fired  by  an  abstract  idea,  she  gives 
to  imagination  "some  pure  hght  in  human 
17 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

foiTH  to  fix  it.'*  She  is  the  sustenance  of 
hungry  souls.  Beheve  in  her  and  you  shall 
be  saved  —  so  runs  the  gospel  of  Petrarch, 
of  Dante,  of  Browning,  of  George  Meredith. 

So  runs  not  mine.  I  have  hearkened  to 
the  voice  of  modern  science,  which  tells  me 
that  woman  is  an  inferior  being,  with  a  weak 
body,  a  stunted  mind,  poor  in  creative  power, 
poor  in  imagination,  poor  in  critical  capac- 
ity— a  being  who  does  not  know  how  to 
work,  nor  how  to  talk,  nor  how  to  play!  I 
hope  no  one  will  imagine  that  I  am  making 
these  charges  up  maliciously  out  of  my  own 
head:  such  a  notion  would  indicate  that  a 
century  of  pamphleteering  on  the  woman 
question  had  made  no  impression  on  a  mind 
saturated  in  the  ideology  of  popular  fiction. 

But  —  I  have  hearkened  even  more 
eagerly  to  the  voice  of  sociology,  which 
tells  me  of  woman's  wonderful  possibilities. 
It  is  with  these  possibihties  that  this  book 
is,  in  the  main,  concerned. 

18 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

But  first  the  explanation  of  why  1,  a  man, 
write  these  articles  on  feminism.  It  involves 
the  betrayal  of  a  secret:  the  secret,  that  is, 
of  the  apparent  indifference  or  even  hostihty 
of  men  toward  the  woman's  movement.  The 
fact  is,  as  has  been  bitterly  recited  by  the 
rebellious  leaders  of  their  sex,  that  women 
have  always  been  what  man  wanted  them  to 
be  —  have  changed  to  suit  his  changing 
ideals.  The  fact  is,  furthermore,  that  the 
woman's  movement  of  today  is  but  another 
example  of  that  readiness  of  women  to  adapt 
themselves  to  a  masculine  demand. 

Men  are  tired  of  subservient  women;  or, 
to  speak  more  exactly,  of  the  seemingly  sub- 
servient woman  who  effects  her  will  by 
stealth  —  the  pretty  slave  with  all  the  slave's 
subtlety  and  cleverness.  So  long  as  it  was 
possible  for  men  to  imagine  themselves  mas- 
ters, they  were  satisfied.  But  when  they 
found  out  that  they  were  dupes,  they  wanted 
a  change.  If  only  for  self -protection,  they 
19 


WOMP^N  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

desired  to  find  in  woman  a  comrade  and  an 
equal.  In  reality  they  desired  it  because  it 
promised  to  be  more  fun. 

So  that  we  have  as  the  motive  behind  the 
rebelhon  of  women  an  obscure  rebellion  of 
men.  Why,  then,  have  men  appeared  hos- 
tile to  the  woman's  rebellion?  Because  what 
men  desire  are  real  individuals  who  have 
achieved  their  own  freedom.  It  will  not  do 
to  pluck  freedom  like  a  flower  and  give  it  to 
the  lady  with  a  polite  bow.  She  must  fight 
for  it. 

We  are,  to  tell  the  truth,  a  little  afraid 
that  unless  the  struggle  is  one  which  will  call 
upon  all  her  powers,  which  will  try  her  to  the 
utmost,  she  will  fall  short  of  becoming  that 
self-sufficient,  able,  broadly  imaginative  and 
healthy-minded  creature  upon  whom  we 
have  set  our  masculine  desire. 

It  is,  then,  as  a  phase  of  the  great  human 
renaissance  inaugurated   by  men   that  the 
woman's  movement  deserves  to  be  consid- 
20 


THE  FEMINIST  MOVEMENT 

ered.  And  what  more  fitting  than  that  a 
man  should  sit  in  judgment  upon  the  con- 
temporary aspects  of  that  movement,  weigh- 
ing out  approval  or  disapproval!  Such 
criticism  is  not  a  masculine  impertinence  but 
a  mascuhne  right,  a  right  properly  pertain- 
ing to  those  who  are  responsible  for  the 
movement,  and  whose  demands  it  must 
ultimately  fulfill. 


CHAPTER  II 

CHARLOTTE  PERKINS  OILMAN 

OF  THE  women  who  represent  and 
carry  on  this  many-sided  movement 
today,  the  first  to  be  considered  from  this 
masculine  viewpoint  should,  I  think,  be 
Charlotte  Perkins  Gilman.  For  she  is,  to 
a  superficial  view,  the  most  intransigent 
feminist  of  them  all,  the  one  most  exclu- 
sively concerned  with  the  improvement  of 
the  lot  of  woman,  the  least  likely  to  com- 
promise at  the  instance  of  man,  child,  church, 
state,  or  devil. 

Mrs.  Gilman  is  the  author  of  "Women 
and  Economics  "  and  several  other  books  of 
theory,  "  What  Diantha  Did "  and  several 
other  books  of  fiction ;  she  is  the  editor  and 
publisher  of  a  remarkable  journal,  The  Fore- 

22 


CHARLOTTE  PERKINS  GILMAN 

runner,  the  whole  varied  contents  of  which 
is  written  by  herself;  she  has  a  couple  of 
plays  to  her  credit,  and  she  has  published  a 
book  of  poems.  If  in  spite  of  all  this  pub- 
hcity  it  is  still  possible  to  misunderstand  the 
attitude  of  Mrs.  Gilman,  1  can  only  suppose 
it  to  be  because  her  poetry  is  less  well  known 
than  her  prose.  For  in  this  book  of  verse, 
"  In  This  Our  World,"  Mrs.  Gilman  has  so 
completely  justified  herself  that  no  man 
need  ever  be  afraid  of  her  —  nor  any  woman 
who,  having  a  hngering  tenderness  for  the 
other  sex,  would  object  to  living  in  a  bee- 
hive world,  full  of  raging  efficient  females, 
with  the  males  relegated  to  the  position  of 
drones. 

Of  com-se,  I  do  but  jest  when  I  speak  of 
this  fear ;  but  there  is,  to  the  ordinary  male, 
something  curiously  objectionable  at  the 
first  glance  in  Mrs.  Oilman's  arguments, 
whether  they  are  for  cooperative  kitchens  or 
for  the  labor  of  women  outside  the  home. 
23 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  Bl/lLDERS 

And  the  reason  for  that  objection  lies  pre- 
cisely in  the  fact  that  her  plans  seem  to  be 
made  in  a  complete  forgetfulness  of  him  and 
his  interests.  It  all  has  the  air  of  a  feminine 
plot.  The  cooperative  kitchens,  and  the 
labor  by  which  women's  economic  independ- 
ence is  to  be  achieved,  seem  the  means  to 
an  end. 

And  so  they  are.  But  the  end,  as  re- 
vealed in  Mrs.  Oilman's  poems,  is  that  one 
which  all  intelhgent  men  must  desire.  I  do 
not  know  whether  or  not  the  more  elaborate 
cooperative  schemes  of  Mrs.  Gihnan  are 
practical ;  and  I  fancy  that  she  rather  exag- 
gerates the  possibilities  of  independent  work 
for  women  who  have  or  intend  to  have  chil- 
dren. But  the  spirit  behind  these  plans  is 
one  which  cannot  but  be  in  the  greatest 
degree  stimulating  and  beneficent  in  its 
effect  upon  her  sex. 

For  Mrs.  Oilman  is,  first  of  all,  a  poet,  an 
idealist.  She  is  a  lover  of  life.  She  rejoices 
24 


CHARLOTTE  PERKINS  GILMAN 

in  beauty  and  daring  and  achievement,  in 
all  the  fine  and  splendid  things  of  the  world. 
She  does  not  merely  disapprove  of  the  con- 
temporary "home"  as  wasteful  and  ineffi- 
cient —  she  hates  it  because  it  vulgarizes  life. 
In  this  "  home,"  this  private  food-preparing 
and  baby-rearing  establishment,  she  sees  a 
machine  which  breaks  down  all  that  is  good 
and  noble  in  women,  which  degrades  and 
pettifies  them.  The  contrast  between  the 
instinctive  ideals  of  young  women  and  the 
sordid  reahties  into  which  housekeeping 
plunges  them  is  to  her  intolerable.  And  in 
the  best  satirical  verses  of  modern  times  she 
ridicules  these  unnecessary  shames.  In  one 
spirited  piece  she  points  out  that  the  soap- 
vat,  the  pickle-tub,  even  the  loom  and  wheel, 
have  lost  their  sanctity,  have  been  banished 
to  shops  and  factories: 

But  bow  ye  down  to  the  Holy  Stove, 
The  Altar  of  the  Home ! 

25 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILD I'^RS 

The  real  feeling  of  Mrs.  Gilman  is  re- 
vealed in  these  lines,  which  voice,  indeed,  the 
angry  mood  of  many  an  outraged  housewife 
who  finds  herself  the  serf  of  a  contraption 
of  cast-iron: 

.    .     .    We  toil  to  keep  the  altar  crowned 

With  dishes  new  and  nice, 
And  Art  and  Love,  and  Time  and  Truth, 
We  offer  up,  with  Health  and  Youth 

In  daily  sacrifice. 

Mrs.  Gilman  is  not  under  the  illusion  that 
the  conditions  of  work  outside  the  home  are 
perfect;  she  is,  indeed,  a  socialist,  and  as 
such  is  engaged  in  the  great  task  of  revo- 
lutionizing the  basis  of  modern  industry. 
But  she  has  looked  into  women's  souls,  and 
turned  away  in  disgust  at  the  likeness  of  a 
dirty  kitchen  which  those  souls  present. 

Into  these  lives  corrupted  by  the  influences 
of  the  "  home  "  nothing  can  come  unspoiled 
—  nothing  can  enter  in  its  original  stature 
and  beauty.    She  says: 

26 


CHARLOTTE  PERKINS  GILMAN 

Birth  comes.     Birth  — 

The  breathing  re-creation  of  the  earth! 

All  earth,  all  sky,  all  God,  life's  sweet  deep  whole. 

Newborn  again  to  each  new  soul! 

"  Oh,  are  you  ?  What  a  shame !  Too  bad,  my  dear ! 

How  well  you  stand  it,  too !    It's  very  queer 

The  dreadful  trials  women  have  to  carry ; 

But  you  can't  always  help  it  when  you  marry. 

Oh,  what  a  sweet  layette !    What  lovely  socks ! 

What  an  exquisite  puff  and  powder  box! 

WTio  is  your  doctor  ?     Yes,  his  skill's  immense  — 

But  it's  a  dreadful  danger  and  expense ! " 

And  so  with  love,  and  death,  and  work  — 
all  are  smutted  and  debased.  And  her  revolt 
is  a  revolt  against  that  which  smuts  and 
debases  them  —  against  those  artificial 
channels  which  break  up  the  strong,  pure 
stream  of  woman's  energy  into  a  thousand 
little  stagnant  canals,  covered  with  spiritual 
pond-scum. 

It  is  a  part  of  her  idealism  to  conceive  life 
in  terms  of  war.  So  it  is  that  she  scorns 
compromise,  for  in  war  compromise  is  trea- 
son. And  so  it  is  that  she  has  heart  for  the 
27 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

long,  slow  marshaling  of  forces,  and  the 
dingy  details  of  the  commissariat  —  for 
these  things  are  necessary  if  the  cry  of  vic- 
tory is  ever  to  ring  out  over  the  battlefield. 
Some  of  her  phrases  have  so  militant  an  air 
that  they  seem  to  have  been  born  among  the 
captains  and  the  shouting.  They  make  us 
ashamed  of  our  vicious  civilian  comfort. 

Mrs.  Oilman's  attitude  toward  the  bear- 
ing and  rearing  of  children  is  easy  to  mis- 
apprehend. She  does  seem  to  relegate  these 
things  to  the  backgrouLud  of  women's  lives. 
She  does  deny  to  these  things  a  tremendous 
importance.  Why,  she  asks,  is  it  so  impor- 
tant that  women  should  bear  and  rear  chil- 
dren to  live  lives  as  empty  and  poor  as 
their  own?  Surely,  she  says,  it  is  more 
important  to  make  life  something  worth 
giving  to  children !  No,  she  insists,  it  is  not " 
sufficient  to  be  a  mother:  an  oyster  can  be 
a  mother.     It  is  necessary  that  a  woman 

28 


CHARLOTTE  PERKINS  OILMAN 

should  be  a  person  as  well  as  a  mother.    She 
must  know  and  do. 

And  as  for  the  ideal  of  love  which  is 
founded  on  masculine  privilege,  she  satirizes 
it  very  effectively  in  some  verses  entitled 
"Wedded  Bliss": 

**  O  come  and  be  my  mate ! "  said  the  Eagle  to  the 
Hen; 

"  I  love  to  soar,  but  then 
I  want  my  mate  to  rest 
Forever  in  the  nest !  " 
Said  the  Hen,  "  I  cannot  fly 
I  have  no  wish  to  try, 
But  I  joy  to  see  my  mate  careering  through  the 

sky !  " 
They  wed,  and  cried,  "  Ah,  this  is  Love,  my  own !  '* 
And  the  Hen  sat,  the  Eagle  soared,  alone. 

Woman,  in  Mrs.  Oilman's  view,  must  not 
be  content  with  Hendom:  the  sky  is  her 
province,  too.  Of  all  base  domesticity,  all 
degrading  love,  she  is  the  enemy.  She  gives 
her  approval  only  to  that  work  which  has  in 
it  something  high  and  free,  and  that  love 
which  is  the  dalliance  of  the  eagles. 
29 


CHAPTER  III 

EMMELINE   PANKHURST   AND   JANE 
ADDAMS 

A  FEW  months  ago  it  was  rather  the 
fashion  to  reply  to  some  political 
verses  by  Mr.  Kipling  which  assumed  to 
show  that  women  should  not  be  given  the 
ballot,  and  which  had  as  their  refrain: 

The  female  of  the  species  is  more  deadly  than  the 
male! 

But  it  seems  that  no  one  pointed  out  that 
this  fact,  even  in  the  limited  sense  in  which 
it  is  a  fact  in  the  human  species,  is  an  argu- 
ment for  giving  women  the  vote. 

For  if  women  are,  as  Mr.  Kipling  says, 
lacking  in  a  sense  of  abstract  justice,  in 
patience,  in  the  spirit  of  compromise;  if 
they  are  violent  and  unscrupulous  in  gaining 
an  end  upon  which  they  have  set  their  hearts, 

30 


EMMELINE  PANKHURST-^ANE  ADDAMS 

then  by  all  means  they  should  be  rendered 
comparatively  harmless  by  being  given  the 
ballot.  For  it  is  characteristic  of  a  republic 
that  its  political  machinery,  created  in  order 
to  carry  out  the  will  of  the  people,  comes  to 
respond  with  difficulty  to  that  will,  while 
being  perfectly  susceptible  to  other  influ- 
ences. Republican  government,  when  not 
modified  by  drastic  democratic  devices,  is  an 
expensive,  cumbrous,  and  highly  inefficient 
method  of  carrying  out  the  popular  will; 
and  casting  a  vote  is  like  nothing  so  much 
as  casting  bread  upon  the  waters.  It  shall 
return  —  after  many  days.  By  voting,  by 
exercising  an  infinitesimal  pressure  on  our 
complex,  slow-moving  political  mechanism, 
one  cannot — it  is  a  sad  fact  —  do  much 
good;  but  one  cannot  —  and  it  should  en- 
courage the  pessimistic  Mr.  Kipling — one 
cannot,  even  though  a  woman,  do  much 
harm. 

This  is  not,  however,  a  disquisition  on 
31 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

woman  suffrage.  There  is  only  one  argu- 
ment for  woman  suffrage:  women  want  it; 
there  are  no  arguments  against  it.  But  one 
may  profitably  inquire,  What  will  be  the 
effect  of  the  emergence  of  women  into  poli- 
tics upon  politics  itself?  And  one  may  hope 
to  find  an  answer  in  the  temperament  and 
career  of  certain  representative  leaders  of 
the  woman's  movement.  Let  us  accordingly 
turn  to  the  accredited  leader  of  the  Enghsh 
"votes  for  women"  movement,  and  to  the 
woman  in  the  American  movement  who  is 
best  known  to  the  public. 

That  Miss  Jane  Addams  has  become 
known  chiefly  through  other  activities  does 
not  matter  here.  It  is  temperament  and 
career  in  which  we  are  immediately  inter- 
ested. What  is  perhaps  the  most  outstand- 
ing fact  in  the  temperament  of  Miss 
Addams  is  revealed  only  indirectly  in  her 
autobiography :  it  may  be  called  the  passion 
of  conciliation. 

32 


EMMELINE  PANKHURST—JANE  ADDAMS 

Mrs.  Emmeline  Pankhurst  has  by  her  ac- 
tions written  herself  down  for  a  fighter.  She 
has  but  recently  been  released  from  Hollo- 
way  jail,  where  she  was  serving  a  term  of 
imprisonment  for  "conspiracy  and  vio- 
lence." In  a  book  by  H.  G.  Wells,  which 
contains  a  very  bitter  attack  on  the  woman's 
suffrage  movement  ( I  refer  to  "  Ann  Veron- 
ica ") ,  she  is  described  as  "  implacable  " ;  and 
I  believe  that  it  is  she  to  whom  Mr.  Wells 
refers  as  being  "as  incapable  of  argument 
as  a  steam  roller  broken  loose."  The  same 
things  might  have  been  said  of  Sherman  on 
his  dreadful  march  to  the  sea.  These 
phrases,  malicious  as  they  are,  contain  what 
I  am  incMned  to  accept  as  an  accurate 
description  of  Mrs.  Pankhurst's  tempera- 
ment. 

No  one  would  call  Mrs.  Pankhurst  a  con- 

cihator.      And    no    one    would    call    Miss 

Addams  "implacable."     It  is  not  intended 

to  suggest  that  Miss  Addams  is  one  of  those 

33 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

inveterate  compromisers  who  prefer  a  bad 
peace  to  a  good  war.  But  she  has  the  gift  of 
imaginative  sympathy;  and  it  is  impossible 
for  her  to  have  toward  either  party  in  a  con- 
flict the  cold  hostility  which  each  party  has 
for  the  other.  She  sees  both  sides ;  and  even 
though  one  side  is  the  wrong  side,  she  cannot 
help  seeing  why  its  partisans  believe  in  it. 

"  If  the  under  dog  were  always  right," 
Miss  Addams  has  said,  "one  might  quite 
easily  try  to  defend  him.  The  trouble  is  that 
very  often  he  is  but  obscurely  right,  some- 
times only  partially  right,  and  often  quite 
wrong,  but  perhaps  he  is  never  so  altogether 
wrong  and  pig-headed  and  utterly  reprehen- 
sible as  he  is  represented  to  be  by  those  who 
add  the  possession  of  prejudice  to  the  other 
almost  insuperable  difficulties  in  under- 
standing him." 

Miss  Addams  has  taken  in  good  faith  the 
social  settlement  ideal — "to  span  the  gulf 
between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  or  between 
34 


EMMELINE  PANKHURST— JANE  ADDAMS 

those  who  have  had  cultural  opportunities 
and  those  who  have  not,  by  the  process  of 
neighborliness."  In  her  writings,  as  in  her 
work,  there  is  never  sounded  the  note  of 
defiance.  Even  in  defense  of  the  social  set- 
tlement and  its  methods  of  conciliation 
(which  have  been  venomously  assailed  by 
the  newspapers  during  Chicago's  fits  of  tem- 
porary insanity,  as  in  the  Averbuch  case). 
Miss  Addams  has  not  become  militant.  She 
has  never  ceased  to  be  serenely  reasonable. 
But  when  one  comes  to  ask  how  power- 
ful Miss  Addams'  example  has  been,  one  is 
forced  to  admit  that  it  has  been  limited. 
There  are  two  other  settlement  houses  in 
Chicago  which  are  managed  in  the  spirit  of 
Hull  House.  But  all  the  others  —  and  there 
are  about  forty  settlement  houses  in  the  city 
—  have  discarded  almost  openly  the  prin- 
ciple of  conciliation.  They  are  efficient,  or 
religious,  or  something  else,  but  they  are 
afraid  of  being  too  sympathetic  with  the 
35 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

working  class.  They  do  not,  for  instance, 
permit  labor  unions  to  meet  in  their  halls. 
The  splendid  social  idealism  of  the  '80s,  of 
which  Miss  Addams  is  representative,  has 
disappeared,  leaving  two  sides  angry  and 
hostile  and  with  none  but  Miss  Addams  be- 
lieving in  the  possibility  of  finding  any  com- 
mon ground  for  action.  One  event  after 
another  from  the  Pullman  strike  to  the 
Averbuch  case  has  brought  this  hostility  out 
into  the  open,  with  Miss  Addams  occupying 
neutral  ground,  and  left  high  and  dry 
upon  it. 

It  is  the  fact  that  Miss  Addams  has  not 
been  able  to  imbue  the  movement  in  which 
she  is  a  leader  with  her  own  spirit.  Her 
career  has  been  successful  only  so  far  as 
individual  genius  could  make  it  sucessful.  If 
one  compares  her  achievement  to  that  of 
Mrs.  Pankhurst,  one  sees  that  the  latter  is 
startingly  social  in  its  nature. 

For  Mrs.  Pankhurst  has  called  upon 
36 


EMMELINE  PANKHURST-JANE  ADDAMS 

women  to  be  like  herself,  to  display  her  own 
Amazonian  qualities.  She  called  upon  shop 
girls  and  college  students  and  wives  and  old 
women  to  make  physical  assaults  on  cabi- 
net ministers,  to  raid  parliament  and  fight 
with  policemen,  to  destroy  property  and  go 
to  prison,  to  endure  almost  every  indignity 
from  the  mobs  and  from  their  jailers,  to 
suffer  in  health  and  perhaps  to  die,  exactly 
as  soldiers  suffer  and  die  in  a  campaign. 

And  they  did.  They  answered  her  call 
by  the  thousands.  They  have  fought  and 
suffered,  and  some  of  them  have  died.  If 
this  had  been  the  result  of  individual  genius 
in  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  transforming  peaceful 
girls  into  fighters  out  of  hand,  she  would  be 
the  most  extraordinary  person  of  the  age. 
But  it  is  impossible  to  beheve  that  all  this 
mihtancy  was  created  out  of  the  void.  It 
was  simply  awakened  where  it  lay  sleeping 
in  these  women's  hearts. 

Mrs.  Pankhurst  has  performed  no 
37 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BXnLDEBS 

miracle.  She  has  only  shown  to  us  the  truth 
which  we  have  blindly  refused  to  see.  She 
has  had  the  insight  to  recognize  in  women 
generally  the  same  fighting  spirit  which  she 
found  in  herself,  and  the  courage  to  draw 
upon  it.  She  has  enabled  us  to  see  what 
women  really  are  like,  just  as  Miss  Addams 
has  by  her  magnificent  anomalies  shown  us 
what  women  are  not  like. 

Can  anyone  doubt  this?  Can  anyone,  see- 
ing the  lone  eminence  of  Miss  Addams,  as- 
sert that  imaginative  sympathy,  patience, 
and  the  spirit  of  conciliation  are  the  ordinary 
traits  of  women?  Can  anyone,  seeing  the 
battle  frenzy  which  Mrs.  Pankhurst  has 
evoked  with  a  signal  in  thousands  of  ordi- 
nary Englishwomen,  deny  that  women  have 
a  fighting  soul? 

And  can  anyone  doubt  the  effect  which 

the  emergence  of  women  into  politics  will 

have,  eventually,  on  politics?     Eventually, 

for  in  spite  of  their  boasted  independence 

38 


EMMELINE  PANKHURST— JANE  ADDAMS 

the  decorous  example  of  men  will  rule  them 
at  first.  But  when  they  have  become  used 
to  politics  —  weU,  we  shall  find  that  we  have 
harnessed  an  unruly  Niagara! 

In  women  as  voters  we  shall  have  an  ele- 
ment impatient  of  restraint,  straining  at  the 
rules  of  procedure,  cynical  of  excuses  for 
inaction;  not  always  by  any  means  on  the 
side  of  progress ;  making  every  mistake  pos- 
sible to  ignorance  and  self-conceit;  but 
transforming  our  politics  from  a  vicious  end 
to  an  efiicient  means  —  from  a  cancer  into 
an  organ. 

This,  with  but  little  doubt,  is  the  historic 
mission  of  women.  They  will  not  escape  a 
certain  taming  by  politics.  But  that  they 
should  be  permanently  tamed  I  find  impos- 
sible to  believe.  Rather  they  will  subdue  it 
to  their  purposes,  remold  it  nearer  to  their 
hearts'  desire,  change  it  as  men  would  never 
dream  of  changing  it,  wreck  it  savagely  in 
the  face  of  our  masculine  protest  and  mer- 
39 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDEES 

rily  rebuild  it  anew  in  the  face  of  our  de- 
spair. With  their  aid  we  may  at  last  achieve 
what  we  seem  to  be  unable  to  achieve  un- 
aided—  a  democracy. 

Meanwhile  let  us  understand  this  suffrage 
movement.  Let  us  understand  that  we  have 
in  militancy  rather  than  in  conciliation,  in 
action  rather  than  in  wisdom,  the  keynote  of 
woman  in  politics.  And  we  males,  who  have 
so  long  played  in  our  politics  at  innocent 
games  of  war,  we  shall  have  an  opportunity 
to  fight  in  earnest  at  the  side  of  the 
Valkyrs. 


40 


CHAPTER  rV 

OLIVE  SCHREINER  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

T  HOPE  that  no  one  will  see  in  the  con- 
-■-  juncture  of  these  names  a  mere  wanton 
fantasy,  or  a  mere  sensational  contrast.  To 
me  there  is  something  extraordinarily  ap- 
propriate in  that  conjuncture,  inasmuch  as 
the  work  of  Olive  Schreiner  and  the  work 
of  Isadora  Duncan  supplement  each  other. 
It  is  the  drawback  of  the  woman's  move- 
ment that  in  any  one  of  its  aspects  (height- 
ened and  colored  as  such  an  aspect  often  is 
by  the  violence  of  propaganda)  it  may  ap- 
pear too  fiercely  narrow.  That  women 
should  make  so  much  fuss  about  getting  the 
vote,  or  that  they  should  so  excite  them- 
selves over  the  prospect  of  working  for 
wages,  will  appear  incomprehensible  to 
41 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

many  people  who  have  a  proper  regard  for 
art,  for  literature,  and  for  the  graces  of  social 
intercourse.  It  is  only  when  the  woman's 
movement  is  seen  broadly,  in  a  variety  oi 
its  aspects,  that  there  comes  the  realization 
that  here  is  a  cause  in  which  every  fine  aspi- 
ration has  a  place,  a  cause  from  which 
sincere  lovers  of  truth  and  beauty  have 
nothing  really  to  fear. 

Mrs.  Olive  Schreiner  stands,  by  virtue  of 
her  latest  book,  "  Women  and  Labor,"  as  an 
exponent  of  the  doctrine  that  would  send 
women  into  every  field  of  economic  activity ; 
or,  rather,  the  doctrine  that  finds  in  the 
forces  which  are  driving  them  there  a  savior 
of  her  sex  from  the  degradation  of  parasit- 
ism. In  behalf  of  this  doctrine  she  has 
expended  all  that  eloquence  and  passion 
which  have  made  her  one  of  the  figures  in 
modern  literature  and  a  spokesman  for  all 
women  who  have  not  learned  to  speak  that 
hieratic  language  which  is  heard,  as  the 
4S 


OLIVE  SCHREINBB  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

inexpressive  speech  of  daily  life  is  not  heard, 
across  space  and  time. 

Miss  Isadora  Duncan  stands  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  renaissance  in  dancing.  She 
has  brought  back  to  us  the  antique  beauty  of 
an  art  of  which  we  have  had  only  relics  and 
memento  in  classic  sculpture  and  decoration. 
She  has  made  us  despise  the  frigid  artifice  of 
the  ballet,  and  taught  us  that  in  the  natural 
movements  of  the  body  are  contained  the 
highest  possibilities  of  choregraphic  beauty. 
It  has  been  to  many  of  us  one  of  the  finest 
experiences  of  our  lives  to  see,  for  the  first 
time,  the  marble  maiden  of  the  Grecian  urn 
come  to  hfe  in  her,  and  all  the  leaf -fringed 
legends  of  Arcady  drift  before  our  enam- 
ored eyes.  She  has  touched  our  lives  with 
the  magic  of  immemorial  loveliness. 

But  to  class  Olive  Schreiner  as  a  sociolo- 
gist and  Isadora  Duncan  as  a  dancer,  to 
divorce  them  by  any  such  categories,  is  to  do 
them  both  an  injustice.  For  they  are  sister 
43 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

workers  in  the  woman's  movement.  They 
have  each  shown  the  way  to  a  new  freedom 
of  the  body  and  the  soul. 

The  woman's  movement  is  a  product  of 
the  evolutionary  science  of  the  nineteenth 
cehtury.  Women's  rebellions  there  have 
been  before,  Utopian  visions  there  have 
been,  which  have  contributed  no  httle  to  the 
modern  movement  by  the  force  of  their  tra- 
dition and  ever-Hving  spirit.  No  Joan  of 
Arc  has  led  men  to  victory,  no  Lady  Godiva 
has  sacrificed  her  modesty — nay,  even,  no 
courtesan  has  taught  a  feeble  king  how  to 
rule  his  country  —  without  feeding  the  flame 
of  feminine  aspiration.  But  it  is  modern 
science  which,  by  giving  us  a  new  view  of 
the  body,  its  functions,  its  needs,  its  claim 
upon  the  world,  has  laid  the  basis  for  a  suc- 
cessful feminist  movement.  When  the  true 
history  of  this  movement  is  written  it  will 
contain  more  about  Herbert  Spencer  and 
Walt  Whitman,  perhaps,  than  about  Vie- 
U 


OLIVE  SCHREINER  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

toria  Woodhull  and  Tennessee  Claflin.  In 
any  case,  it  is  to  the  body  that  one  looks  for 
the  Magna  Charta  of  feminism. 

The  eye — that  is  to  say  —  is  guarantor 
for  the  safety  of  art  in  a  future  regime  under 
the  dominance  of  women;  and  the  ear  for 
poetry.  These  have  their  functions  and 
their  needs,  and  the  woman  of  the  future 
will  not  deny  them. 

It  is  the  hand  that  Olive  Schreiner  would 
emancipate  from  idleness.  She  knows  the 
significance  of  the  hand  in  human  history. 
It  was  by  virtue  of  the  hand  that  we,  and 
not  some  other  creature,  gained  lordship 
over  the  earth.  It  was  the  hand  (marvelous 
instrument,  coaxing  out  of  the  directing  will 
an  ever-increasing  subtlety)  that  made  pos- 
sible the  human  brain,  and  all  the  vistas  of 
reason  and  imagination  by  which  our  little 
lives  gain  their  peculiar  grandeur. 

And  this  hand,  if  it  be  a  woman's  in  the 
present  day,  is  doomed  to  the  smallest  activi- 
45 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

ties.  "Our  spinning  wheels  are  all  broken 
.  .  .  Our  hoes  and  grindstones  passed  from 
us  long  ago  .  .  .  Year  by  year,  day  by  day, 
there  is  a  silently  working  but  determined 
tendency  for  the  sphere  of  women's  domestic 
labors  to  contract  itself."  Even  the  training 
of  her  child  is  taken  away  from  the  mother 
by  the  *'  mighty  and  inexorable  demands  of 
modem  civilization."  That  condition  is  to 
her  intolerable;  and  it  is  on  behalf  of 
women's  empty  hands  that  she  makes  her 
demand:  "that,  in  that  strange  new  world 
that  is  arising  alike  upon  the  man  and  the 
woman,  where  nothing  is  as  it  was,  and  all 
things  are  assuming  new  shapes  and  rela- 
tions, that  in  this  new  world  we  also  shall 
have  our  share  of  honored  and  socially  use- 
ful human  toil,  our  full  half  of  the  labor  of 
the  Children  of  Woman." 

And  what  of  Miss  Duncan  —  what  is  her 
part  in  the  woman's  movement?     In  her 
book  on  "  The  Dance  "  she  tells  a  story: 
46 


OLIVE  SCHREINER  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

"A  woman  once  asked  me  why  I  danoe 
with  bare  feet,  and  I  replied,  *  Madam,  I  be- 
lieve in  the  religion  of  the  beauty  of  the 
human  foot ' ;  and  the  lady  rephed,  '  But  I 
do  not,'  and  I  said :  '  Yet  you  must.  Madam, 
for  the  expression  and  intelligence  of  the  hu- 
man foot  is  one  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of 
the  evolution  of  man.'  '  But,'  said  the  lady, 
'  I  do  not  believe  in  the  evolution  of  man/ 
At  this  said  I,  '  My  task  is  at  an  end.  I 
refer  you  to  my  most  revered  teachers,  Mr. 
Charles  Darwin  and  Mr.  Ernst  Haeckel — * 
'  But,'  said  the  lady,  *  I  do  not  believe  in 
Darwin  and  Haeckel — '  At  this  point  I 
could  think  of  nothing  more  to  say.  So  you 
see  that,  to  convince  people,  I  am  of  little 
value  and  ought  not  to  speak." 

But  rather  to  dance!  Yet  it  is  good  to 
find  so  explicit  a  statement  of  the  idea 
which  she  nobly  expresses  in  her  dancing. 
For,  as  the  hand  is  the  symbol  of  that  con- 
structive exertion  of  the  body  which  we  call 
47 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

work,  so  is  the  foot  the  symbol  of  that  dif- 
fusive exertion  of  the  body  which  we  call 
play.  Isadora  Duncan  would  emancipate 
the  one  as  Ohve  Schreiner  would  emancipate 
the  other — to  new  activities  and  new 
delights. 

And  if  such  work  is  not  a  thing  for  itself 
only,  but  a  gateway  to  a  new  world,  so  is 
such  play  not  a  thing  for  itself  only.  "  It  is 
not  only  a  question  of  true  art,"  writes  Miss 
Duncan,  "  it  is  a  question  of  race,  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  female  sex  to  beauty  and 
health,  of  the  return  to  the  original  strength 
and  the  natural  movements  of  woman's 
body.  It  is  a  question  of  the  development 
of  perfect  mothers  and  the  birth  of  healthy 
and  beautiful  children."  Here  we  have  an 
inspiriting  expression  of  the  idea  which 
through  the  poems  of  Walt  Whitman  and 
the  writings  of  various  moderns,  has  reno- 
vated the  modern  soul  and  made  us  see,  with- 
out any  obscene  blurring  by  Puritan  spec- 
48 


OLIVE  SCHKBINER  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

tacles,  the  goodness  of  the  whole  body.  This 
is  as  much  a  part  of  the  woman's  movement 
as  the  demand  for  a  vote  (or,  rather,  it  is 
more  central  and  essential  a  part)  ;  and  only 
by  realizing  this  is  it  possible  to  understand 
that  movement. 

The  body  is  no  longer  to  be  separated  in 
the  thought  of  women  from  the  soul :  "  The 
dancer  of  the  future  will  be  one  whose  body 
and  soul  have  grown  so  harmoniously 
together  that  the  natural  language  of  that 
soul  will  have  become  the  movement  of  the 
body.  The  dancer  will  not  belong  to  a  na- 
tion, but  to  all  humanity.  She  will  dance, 
not  in  the  form  of  nymph,  nor  fairy,  nor 
coquette,  but  in  the  form  of  woman  in  its 
greatest  and  purest  expression.  She  will 
realize  the  mission  of  woman's  body  and  the 
holiness  of  all  its  parts.  She  will  dance  the 
changing  life  of  nature,  showing  how  each 
part  is  transformed  into  the  other.  From 
all  parts  of  her  body  shall  shine  radiant  in- 
49 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

telligence,  bringing  to  the  world  the  message 
of  the  thoughts  and  aspirations  of  thousands 
of  women.  She  shall  dance  the  freedom  of 
woman. 

"  She  will  help  womankind  to  a  new 
knowledge  of  the  possible  strength  and 
beauty  of  their  bodies,  and  the  relation  of 
their  bodies  to  the  earth  nature  and  to  the 
children  of  the  future.  She  will  dance,  the 
body  emerging  again  from  centuries  of  civil- 
ized forgetfulness,  emerging  not  in  the 
nudity  of  primitive  man,  but  in  a  new  naked- 
ness, no  longer  at  war  with  spirituality  and 
intelligence,  but  joining  itself  forever  with 
this    intelligence    in    a    glorious    harmony. 

"  Oh,  she  is  coming,  the  dancer  of  the 
future;  the  free  spirit,  who  will  inhabit  the 
body  of  new  women ;  more  glorious  than  any 
woman  that  has  yet  been;  more  beautiful 
than  the  Egyptian,  than  the  Greek,  the  early 
Italian,  than  all  women  of  past  centuries  — 
the  highest  intelligence  in  the  freest  body!" 
50 


OLIVE  8CHREINER  AND  ISADORA  DUNCAN 

If  the  woman's  movement  means  any- 
thing, it  means  that  women  are  demanding 
everything.  They  will  not  exchange  one 
place  for  another,  nor  give  up  one  right  to 
pay  for  another,  but  they  will  achieve  all 
rights  to  which  their  bodies  and  brains  give 
them  an  implicit  title.  They  will  have  a 
larger  political  life,  a  larger  motherhood,  a 
larger  social  service,  a  larger  love,  and  they 
will  reconstruct  or  destroy  institutions  to 
that  end  as  it  becomes  necessary.  They  will 
not  be  content  with  any  concession  or  any 
triumph  until  they  have  conquered  all 
experience. 


51 


CHAPTER  V 
BEATRICE  WEBB  AND  EMMA  GOLDMAN 

THE  careers  of  these  two  women  serve 
admirably  to  exhibit  the  woman's 
movement  in  still  another  aspect,  and  to 
throw  hght  upon  the  essential  nature  of 
woman's  character.  These  careers  stand  in 
plain  contrast.  Beatrice  Webb  has  com- 
piled statistics,  and  Emma  Goldman  has 
preached  the  gospel  of  freedom.  It  remains 
to  be  shown  which  is  the  better  and  the  more 
characteristically  feminine  gift  to  the  world. 
Beatrice  Potter  was  the  daughter  of  a  Ca- 
nadian railway  president.  Born  in  1858,  she 
grew  up  in  a  time  when  revolutionary  move- 
ments were  in  the  making.  She  was  a  pupil 
of  Herbert  Spencer,  and  it  was  perhaps 
from  him  that  she  learned  so  to  respect  her 
natural  interest  in  facts  that  the  brilliancy 

52 


BEATRICE  WEBB  AND   EMMA  GOLDMAN 

of  no  generalization  could  lure  her  into  for- 
getting them.  At  all  events,  she  was  cap- 
tured permanently  by  the  magic  of  facts. 
She  studied  working-class  hfe  in  Lancashire 
and  East  I^ondon  at  first  hand,  and  in  1885 
joined  Charles  Booth  in  his  investigations 
of  English  social  conditions.  These  investi- 
gations (which  in  my  amateur  ignorance  I 
always  confused  with  those  of  General 
Booth  of  the  Salvation  Arm}^!)  were  pub- 
lished in  four  large  volumes  entitled  "  Life 
and  Labor  of  the  People."  Miss  Potter's 
special  contributions  were  articles  on  the 
docks,  the  tailoring  trade,  and  the  Jewish 
community.  Later  she  published  a  book  on 
"  The  Cooperative  Movement  in  Great 
Britain."  Then,  in  1892,  she  married  Sid- 
ney Webb,  a  man  extraordinarily  of  her 
own  sort,  and  became  confirmed,  if  such  a 
thing  were  necessary,  in  her  statistical  habit 
of  mind. 

Meanwhile,  in  1883,  the  Fabian  Society 
53 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

had  been  founded.  But  first  a  word  about 
statistics.  "  Statistics "  does  not  mean  a 
long  list  of  figures.  It  means  the  spreading 
of  knowledge  of  facts.  Statistics  may  be 
called  the  dogma  that  knowledge  is  dynamic 
—  that  it  is  somehow  operative  in  bringing 
about  that  great  change  which  all  intelligent 
people  desire  (and  which  the  Fabians  con- 
ceived as  Socialism).  The  Fabian  Society 
was  founded  on  the  dogma  of  statistics  as 
on  a  rock.  The  Fabians  did  not  start  a 
newspaper,  nor  create  a  new  political  party, 
nor  organize  public  meetings;  but  they 
wrote  to  the  newspapers  already  in  exist- 
ence, ran  for  office  on  party  tickets  already 
in  the  field,  and  made  speeches  to  other  or- 
ganizations. That  is  to  say,  they  went  about 
like  the  cuckoo,  laying  their  statistical  eggs 
in  other  people's  nests  and  expecting  to  see 
them  hatch  into  enlightened  public  opinion 
and  progressive  legislation. 

Some  of  them  hatched  and  some  of  them 
54 


BEATRICE  WEBB  AND  EMMA  GOLDMAN 

didn't.  The  point  is  that  we  have  in  this 
section  of  Beatrice  Webb's  career  something 
typical  of  herself.  She  has  gone  on,  serving 
on  government  commissions,  writing  (with 
her  husband)  the  history  of  Trades  Union- 
ism, patiently  collecting  statistics  and  get- 
ting them  printed  in  black  ink  on  white 
paper,  making  detailed  plans  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  poverty,  and  always  concerning 
herself  with  the  homely  fact. 

At  the  time  that  Beatrice  Potter  joined 
Mr.  Booth  in  his  social  investigations  there 
was  a  16-year-old  Jewish  girl  living  in  the 
German-Russian  province  of  Kurland.  A 
year  later,  hi  1886,  this  girl,  Emma  Gold- 
man by  name,  came  to  America,  to  escape 
the  inevitable  persecutions  attending  on  any 
lover  of  liberty  in  Russia.  She  had  been  one 
of  those  who  had  gone  "  to  the  people  " ;  and 
it  was  as  a  working  girl  that  she  came  to 
America. 

She  had,  that  is  to  say,  the  heightened 
55 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

sensibilities,  the  keen  sympathies,  of  Uie 
middle  class  ideahst,  and  the  direct  contact 
with  the  harsh  realities  of  our  social  and  in- 
dustrial conditions  which  is  the  lot  of  the 
worker.  Her  first  experiences  in  America 
disabused  her  of  the  traditional  belief  that 
America  was  a  refuge  where  the  oppressed 
of  all  lands  were  welcome.  The  treatment 
of  immigrants  aboard  ship,  the  humiliating 
brutalities  of  the  officials  at  Castle  Garden, 
and  the  insolent  tyranny  of  the  New  York 
police  convinced  her  that  she  had  simply 
come  from  one  oppressed  land  to  another. 
She  went  to  work  in  a  clothing  factory, 
her  wages  being  $2.50  a  week.  She  had 
ample  opportunities  to  see  the  degradations 
of  our  economic  system,  especially  as  it  af- 
fects women.  So  it  was  not  strange  that 
she  should  l>e  drawn  into  the  American  labor 
movement,  which  was  then,  with  the  Knights 
of  Labor,  the  eight-hour  agitation,  and  the 
propaganda  of  the  Socialists  and  the  Anar- 
56 


BEATRICE  WEBB  AND   EMMA  GOLDMAN 

chists,  at  its  height.  She  became  acquaintea 
with  various  radicals,  read  pamphlets  and 
books,  and  heard  speeches.  She  was  espe- 
cially influenced  by  the  eloquent  writings  of 
Johann  Most  in  his  journal  Freiheit. 

So  little  is  known,  and  so  much  absurd 
nonsense  is  believed,  about  the  Anarchists, 
that  it  is  necessary  to  state  dogmatically  a 
few  facts.  If  these  facts  seem  odd,  the 
reader  is  respectfully  urged  to  verify  them. 
One  fact  is  that  secret  organizations  of 
Anarchists  plotting  a  violent  overthrow  of 
the  government  do  not  exist,  and  never  have 
existed,  save  in  the  writings  of  Johann  Most 
md  in  the  imagination  of  the  police:  the 
*vhole  spirit  of  Anarchism  is  opposed  to  such 
organizations.  Another  fact  is  that  Anar- 
chists do  not  believe  in  violence  of  any  kind, 
or  in  any  exercise  of  force ;  when  they  com- 
mit violence  it  is  not  as  Anarchists,  but  as 
outraged  human  beings.  They  believe  that 
violent  reprisals  are  bound  to  be  provoked 
57 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

among  workingmen  by  the  tyrannies  to 
which  they  are  subjected;  but  they  abjure 
alike  the  bomb  and  the  policeman's  club. 

There  was  a  brief  period  in  which  Anar- 
chists, under  the  influence  of  Johann  Most, 
believed  in  (even  if  they  did  not  practice) 
the  use  of  dynamite.  But  this  period  was 
ended,  in  America,  by  the  hanging  of  several 
innocent  men  in  Chicago  in  1887;  which  at 
least  served  the  useful  purpose  of  showing 
radicals  that  it  was  a  bad  plan  even  to  talk 
of  dynamite.  And  this  hanging,  which  was 
the  end  of  what  may  be  called  the  Anarchist 
"boom"  in  this  country,  was  the  beginning 
of  Emma  Goldman's  career  as  a  publicist. 

Since  1887  the  Anarchists  have  lost  influ- 
ence among  workingmen  until  they  are 
today  neghgible  —  unless  one  credits  them 
with  Syndicalism  —  as  a  factor  in  the  labor 
movement.  The  Anarchists  have,  in  fact, 
left  the  industrial  field  more  and  more  and 
have  entered   into   other   kinds   of  propa- 

58 


BEATRICE  WEBB  AND   EMMA  GOLDMAN 

ganda.  They  have  especially  "gone  in  for 
kissing  games." 

And  Emma  Goldman  reflects,  in  her  ca- 
reer, the  change  in  Anarchism.  She  has  be- 
come simply  an  advocate  of  freedom  —  free- 
dom of  every  sort.  She  does  not  advocate 
violence  any  more  than  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son advocated  violence.  It  is,  in  fact,  as  an 
essayist  and  speaker  of  the  kind,  if  not  the 
quality,  of  Emerson,  Thoreau,  or  George 
Francis  Train,  that  she  is  to  be  considered. 

Aside  from  these  activities  (and  the  evad- 
ing of  our  overzealous  police  in  times  of 
stress)  she  has  worked  as  a  trained  nurse 
and  midwife ;  she  conducted  a  kind  of  radical 
salon  in  New  York,  frequented  by  such 
people  as  John  Swinton  and  Benjamin 
Tucker;  she  traveled  abroad  to  study  social 
conditions;  she  has  become  conversant  with 
such  modern  writings  as  those  of  Haupt- 
mann,  Nietzsche,  Ibsen,  Zola,  and  Thomas 
Hardy.  It  is  stated  that  the  "Rev.  Mr. 
59 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILD  KRS 

Parkliurst,  during  the  Lexow  investigation, 
did  his  utmost  to  induce  her  to  join  the 
Vigilance  Committee  in  order  to  fight  Tam- 
many HalL"  She  was  the  manager  of  Paul 
Orlenoff  and  Mme.  Nazimova.  She  was  a 
friend  of  Ernest  Crosby.  Her  Ubrary,  it  is 
said,  would  be  taken  for  that  of  a  university 
extension  lecturer  on  literature. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  Emma  Goldman 
is  of  a  type  familiar  enough  in  America,  and 
conceded  a  popular  respect.  She  has  a  legit- 
imate social  function  —  that  of  holding  be- 
fore our  eyes  the  ideal  of  freedom.  She  is 
licensed  to  taunt  us  with  our  moral 
cowardice,  to  plant  in  our  souls  the  nettles 
of  remorse  at  having  acquiesced  so  tamely 
in  the  brutal  artifice  of  present  day  society. 

I  submit  the  following  passage  from  her 
writings  ("Anarchism  and  Other  Essays") 
as  at  once  showing  her  difference  from  other 
radicals  and  exhibiting  the  nature  of  her 
appeal  to  her  public: 
60 


BBATRICE   WEBB  AND  EMJVIA  GOLDMAN 

"  The  misfortune  of  woman  is  not  that  she 
is  unable  to  do  the  work  of  a  man,  but  that 
she  is  wasting  her  hfe  force  to  outdo  him, 
with  a  tradition  of  centuries  which  has  left 
her  physically  incapable  of  keeping  pace 
with  him.  Oh,  I  know  some  have  succeeded, 
but  at  what  cost,  at  what  terrific  cost !  The 
import  is  not  the  kind  of  work  woman  does, 
but  rather  the  quality  of  the  work  she  fur- 
nishes. She  can  give  suffrage  or  the  ballot 
no  new  quality,  nor  can  she  receive  anything 
from  it  that  will  enhance  her  own  quality. 
Her  development,  her  freedom,  her  inde- 
pendence, must  come  from  and  through  her- 
self. First,  by  asserting  herself  as  a  per- 
sonahty,  and  not  as  a  sex  commodity.  Sec- 
ond, by  refusing  the  right  to  anyone  over  her 
body;  by  refusing  to  bear  children  unless 
she  wants  them ;  by  refusing  to  be  a  servant 
to  God,  the  State,  society,  the  husband,  the 
family,  etc. ;  by  making  her  life  simpler,  but 
deeper  and  richer.  That  is,  by  trying  to 
61 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

learn  the  meaning  and  substance  of  life  in 
all  its  complexities,  by  freeing  herself  from 
the  fear  of  public  opinion  and  public  con- 
demnation. Only  that,  and  not  the  ballot, 
will  set  woman  free,  will  make  her  a  force 
hitherto  unknown  in  the  world,  a  force  for 
real  love,  for  peace,  for  harmony;  a  force 
of  divine  fire,  of  hfe  giving;  a  creator  of 
free  men  and  women." 

There  is  httle  in  this  that  Ibsen  would  not 
have  said  amen  to.  But  —  and  this  is  the 
conclusion  to  which  my  chapter  draws  — 
Ibsen  has  said  it  already,  and  said  it  more 
powerfully.  Emma  Goldman  —  who  (if 
among  women  anyone)  should  have  for  us 
a  message  of  her  ovm,  striking  to  the  heart 
—  repeats,  in  a  less  effective  cadence,  what 
she  has  learned  from  him. 

The  work  of  Beatrice  Webb  is  the  prose 

of  revolution.     The  work  of  Ibsen  is  its 

poetry.    Beatrice  Webb  has  performed  her 

work  —  one  comes  to  feel  —  as  well  as  Ibsen 

62 


BEATRICE  WEBB  AND  EMMA   GOLDMAN 

has  his.  And  one  wonders  if,  after  all,  the 
prose  is  not  that  which  women  are  best  en- 
dowed to  succeed  in. 

A  book  review  (written  by  a  woman) 
which  I  have  at  hand  contains  some  gen- 
erahzations  which  bear  on  the  subject. 
"This  is  a  woman's  book  [saj^s  the  re- 
viewer], and  a  book  which  could  only  have 
been  written  by  a  woman,  though  it  is  sin- 
gfularly  devoid  of  most  of  the  qualities  which 
are  usually  recognized  as  feminine.  For  ro- 
mance and  sentiment  do  not  properly  lie  in 
the  woman's  domain.  She  deals,  when  she 
is  herself,  with  the  material  facts  of  the  life 
she  knows.  Her  talent  is  to  exhibit  them  in 
the  remorseless  light  of  reality  and  shorn  of 
ail  the  glamour  of  idealism.  Great  and 
poetical  imagination  rarely  informs  her  art, 
but  within  the  strictness  of  its  limits  it  lives 
by  an  intense  and  scrupulous  sincerity  of 
observation  and  an  uncompromising  recog- 
nition of  the  logic  of  existence." 
63 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

If  that  is  true,  shall  we  not  then  expect 
a  future  more  largely  influenced  by  women 
to  have  more  of  the  hard,  matter-of-fact 
quality,  the  splendid  realism  characteristic 
of  woman  "when  she  is  herself"? 


64 


CHAPTER  VI 

MARGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

THE  work  of  Margaret  Dreier  Robins 
has  been  done  in  the  National 
Women's  Trade  Union  League.  It  might 
be  supposed  that  the  aim  of  such  an  organi- 
zation is  sufficiently  explicit  in  its  title:  to 
get  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours.  But  I 
fancy  that  it  would  be  a  truer  thing  to  say 
that  its  aim  is  to  bring  into  being  that 
ideal  of  American  womanhood  which  Walt 
Whitman  described: 

They  are  not  one  jot  less  than  I  am, 

They  are  tann'd  in  the  face  by  shining  suns  and 

blowing  winds, 
Their    flesh    has    the    old    divine    suppleness    and 

s+rength, 
They  know  how  to  swim,  row,  ride,  wrestle,  shoot, 

run,  strike,  retreat,  advance,  resist,  defend 

themselves, 

65 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

The}'  are  ultimate  in  their  own  right  —  they  are 
calm,  clear,  well-possessed  of  themselves. 

When  Whitman  made  this  magnificent 
prophecy  for  American  womanhood  the 
Civil  War  had  not  been  fought  and  its  eco- 
nomic consequences  were  unguessed  at.  The 
factory  system,  which  had  come  into  Eng- 
land in  the  last  century,  bringing  with  it  the 
most  unspeakable  exploitation  of  women 
and  children,  had  hardlj^  gained  a  foothold 
in  this  countr}^  In  1840,  of  the  seven  em- 
ployments open  to  women  (teaching,  needle- 
work, keeping  boarders,  working  in  cotton 
mills,  in  bookbinderies,  typesetting  and 
household  service)  only  one  was  representa- 
tive of  the  new  industrial  condition  which 
today  affects  so  profoundly  the  feminine 
physique.  And  to  the  daughters  of  a  na- 
tion that  was  still  imbued  with  the  pioneer 
spirit,  work  in  cotton  mills  appealed  so  little 
that  they  undertook  it  only  for  unusually 
high  pay.  Anyone  of  that  period  seeing  the 
66 


MAEGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

red-cheeked,  robust,  intelligent,  happy  girl 
operatives  of  Lowell  might  have  dismissed 
his  fears  of  the  factory  as  a  sinister  influence 
in  the  development  of  American  woman- 
hood and  gone  on  to  dream,  with  Walt 
Whitman,  of  a  race  of  "fierce,  athletic 
girls." 

But  two  things  happened.  With  the 
growing  flood  of  immigration,  the  factories 
were  abandoned  more  and  more  to  the 
"  foreigners,"  the  native-born  citizens  losing 
their  pride  in  the  excellence  of  working  con- 
ditions and  tlie  character  of  the  operatives. 
And  all  the  while  the  factory  was  becoming 
more  and  more  an  integral  part  of  our  civi- 
lization, demanding  larger  and  larger  multi- 
tudes of  girls  and  women  to  attend  its 
machinery.  So  that,  with  the  enormous  de- 
velopment of  industry  since  the  Civil  War, 
the  factory  has  become  the  chief  field  of  fem- 
inine endeavor  in  America.  In  spite  of  the 
great  opening  up  of  all  sorts  of  work  to 
67 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

women,  in  spite  of  the  store,  the  office,  the 
studio,  the  professions,  still  the  factory  re- 
mains most  important  in  any  consideration 
of  the  health  and  strength  of  women. 

If  the  greatest  part  of  our  womankind 
spends  its  life  in  factories,  and  if  it  further 
appears  that  this  is  no  temporary  situation, 
but  (practically  speaking)  a  permanent  one, 
then  it  becomes  necessary  to  inquire  how  far 
the  factory  is  hindering  the  creation  of  that 
ideal  womanhood  which  Walt  Whitman  pre- 
dicted for  us. 

As  opposed  to  the  old-fashioned  method 
of  manufacture  in  the  home  (or  the  sweat- 
shop, which  is  the  modern  equivalent),  the 
factory  often  shows  a  gain  in  light  and  air, 
a  decrease  of  effort,  an  added  leisure;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  considerable  loss 
of  individual  freedom  and  an  increase  in  mo- 
notony. But  child  labor,  a  too  long  working 
day,  bad  working  conditions,  lack  of  protec- 
tion from  fire,  personal  exploitation  by  fore- 
68 


MARGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

men,  inhumanly  low  wages,  and  all  sorts  of 
petty  injustice,  though  not  essential  to  the 
system,  are  prominent  features  of  factory 
work  as  it  generally  exists. 

People  who  consider  every  factory  an  In- 
ferno, however,  and  have  only  pity  for  its 
workers,  are  far  from  understanding  the 
situation.  Here  is  a  field  of  work  which  is 
capable  of  competing  successfully  with  do- 
mestic service,  and  even  of  attracting  girls 
from  homes  where  there  exists  no  absolute 
necessity  for  women's  wages.  Yet  at  its 
contemporary  best,  with  a  ten-hour  law  in 
operation,  efficient  factory  inspection,  decent 
working  conditions  and  a  just  and  humane 
management,  the  factory  remains  an  insti- 
tution extremely  perilous  to  the  Whitmanic 
ideal  of  womanhood. 

But  there  are  women  who,  undaunted  by 

the    new   conditions    brought   about   by   a 

changing  economic  system,  seize  upon  those 

very  conditions  to  use  them  as  the  means  to 

69 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

their  end:  such  a  woman  is  Mrs.  Robins. 
Has  a  new  world,  bounded  by  factory  walls 
and  noisy  with  the  roar  of  machinery,  grown 
up  about  us,  to  keep  women  from  their  heri- 
tage? She  will  help  them  to  ose  those  very 
walls  and  that  very  machinery  to  achieve 
their  destiny,  a  destiny  of  which  a  physical 
well-being  is,  as  Walt  Whitman  knew  it  to 
he,  the  most  certain  symbol. 

The  factory  already  gives  women  a  cer- 
tain independence.  It  may  yet  give  them 
pleasure,  the  joy  of  creation.  Indeed,  it 
must,  when  the  workers  require  it ;  and  those 
who  are  most  likely  to  require  it  are  the 
women  workers. 

It  is  well  known  that  with  the  ultra- 
development  of  the  machine,  the  subdivision 
of  labor,  the  regime  of  piecework,  it  has 
become  practically  impossible  for  the  worker 
to  take  any  artistic  pleasure  in  his  product. 
It  is  not  so  well  known  how  necessary  such 
pleasure  in  the  product  is  to  the  physical 
70 


MARGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

well-being  of  women  —  how  utterly  disas- 
trous to  their  nervous  organization  is  the 
monotony  and  irresponsibility  of  piecework. 
This  method  —  which  men  workers  have 
grumbled  at,  but  to  which  they  seem  to  have 
adjusted  themselves  —  bears  its  fruits 
among  women  in  neurasthenia,  headaches, 
and  the  derangement  of  the  organs  which  are 
the  basis  of  their  different  nervous  consti- 
tution. It  is  sufficiently  clear  to  those  who 
have  seen  the  personal  reactions  of  working 
girls  to  the  piecework  system,  that  when 
women  attain,  as  men  in  various  industries 
have  attained,  the  practical  management  of 
the  factory,  piecework  will  get  a  setback. 

But  not  merely  good  conditions,  not 
merely  a  living  wage,  not  merely  a  ten  or  an 
eight  hour  day  —  all  that  self-government  in 
the  shop  can  bring  is  the  object  of  the 
Women's  Trade  Union  League. 

"  The  chief  social  gain  of  the  union  shop," 
says  Mrs.  Robins,  "  is  not  its  generally  bet- 
71 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

ter  wages  and  shorter  hours,  but  rather  tlie 
incentive  it  offers  for  initiative  and  social 
leadership,  the  call  it  makes,  through  the 
common  industrial  relationship  and  the  com- 
mon hope,  upon  the  moral  and  reasoning 
faculties,  and  the  sense  of  fellowship,  inde- 
pendence and  group  strength  it  develops. 
In  every  workshop  of  say  thirty  girls  there 
is  undreamed  of  initiative  and  capacity  for 
social  leadership  and  control — unknown 
wealth  of  intellectual  and  moral  resources." 

It  is,  in  fact,  tiiis  form  of  activity  which  to 
many  thousands  of  factory  girls  makes  the 
difference  between  living  and  existing,  be- 
tween a  painful,  necessary  drudgery  and  a 
happy  exertion  of  all  their  faculties.  It  can 
give  them  a  more  useful  education  than  any 
school,  a  more  vital  faith  than  any  church, 
a  more  invigorating  sense  of  power  than  any 
other  career  open  to  them. 

To  do  all  these  things  it  must  be  indige- 
nous to  working-class  soil.  No  benefaction 
72 


MARGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

originating  in  the  philanthropic  motives  of 
middle-class  people,  no  enterprise  of  patron- 
age, will  ever  have  any  such  meaning.  A 
movement,  to  have  such  meaning,  must  be 
of  the  working  class,  and  by  the  working 
class,  as  well  as  for  the  working  class.  It 
must  be  imbued  with  working-class  feeling, 
and  it  must  subserve  working-class  ideals. 

It  is  the  distinction  of  Mrs.  Robins  that 
she  has  seen  this.  She  has  gone  to  the  work- 
ers to  learn  rather  than  to  teach  —  she  has 
sought  to  unfold  the  ideals  and  capacities 
latent  in  working  girls  rather  than  impress 
upon  them  the  alien  ideals  and  capacities  of 
another  class. 

"Just" — it  is  Mrs.  Robins  that  speaks — 
"as  under  a  despotic  church  and  a  feudal 
state  the  possible  power  and  beauty  of  the 
common  people  was  denied  expression,  so 
under  industrial  feudalism  the  intellectual 
and  moral  powers  of  the  workers  are  slowly 
choked  to  death,  with  incalculable  loss  to  the 
73 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

individual  and  the  race.  It  is  easy  to  kill ;  it 
requires  a  great  spirit  as  well  as  a  great  mind 
to  arouse  the  dormant  energies,  to  vitalize 
them  and  to  make  them  creative  forces  for 
good." 

One  is  reminded  of  the  words  of  John 
Galsworthy,  addressed  to  workingwomen : 
"  There  is  beginning  to  be  a  little  light  in  the 
sky;  whether  the  sun  is  ever  to  break 
through  depends  on  your  constancy,  and 
courage,  and  wisdom.  The  future  is  in  your 
hands  more  than  in  the  hands  of  men;  it 
rests  on  your  virtues  and  well-being,  rather 
than  on  the  virtues  and  the  welfare  of  men, 
for  it  is  you  who  produce  and  mold  the  Fu- 
ture." 

There  are  6,000,000  working  women  in 
the  United  States,  and  half  of  them  are  girls 
under  21.  One  may  go  out  any  day  in 
the  city  streets,  at  morning  or  noon  or 
evening,  and  look  at  a  representative  hun- 
dred of  them.  The  factories  have  not  been 
74 


MARGARET  DREIER  ROBINS 

able  to  rob  them  of  beauty  and  strength  and 
the  charm  of  femininity,  and  in  that  beauty 
and  strength  and  charm  there  is  a  world  of 
promise.  And  that  promise  already  begins 
to  be  unfolded  when  to  them  comes  Mrs. 
Robins  with  a  gospel  germane  to  their  na- 
tures, saying,  "Long  enough  have  you 
dreamed  contemptible  dreams." 


75 


CHAPTER  VII 
ELLEN  KEY 

IN  these  chapters  a  sincere  attempt  has 
been  made  not  so  much  to  show  what  a 
few  exceptional  women  have  accomplished 
as  to  exhibit  through  a  few  prominent  figures 
the  essential  nature  of  women,  and  to  show 
what  may  be  expected  from  a  future  in 
which  women  will  have  a  larger  freedom 
and  a  larger  influence. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  tlie  peculiar 
idealism  of  women  is  one  that  works  itself 
out  through  the  materials  of  workaday  life, 
and  which  seeks  to  break  or  remake  those 
materials  by  way  of  fulfilling  that  idealism ; 
it  has  been  shown  that  this  idealism,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  more  abstract  and  creative 
idealism  of  men,  deserves  to  be  called  prac- 
ticalism,  a  practicalism  of  a  noble  and  beau- 

16 


ELLEN  KEY 

tiful  sort  which  we  are  far  from  appreciat- 
ing; and  as  complementing  these  forms  of 
activity,  the  play  instinct,  the  instinct  of 
recreation,  has  been  pointed  out  as  the 
parallel  to  the  creative  or  poetic  instinct  of 
men. 

Woman  as  reconstructor  of  domestic 
economics,  woman  as  a  destructive  political 
agent  of  enormous  potency,  woman  as 
worker,  woman  as  dancer,  woman  as  statis- 
tician, woman  as  organizer  of  the  forces  of 
labor — in  these  it  has  been  the  intent  to 
show  the  real  woman  of  today  and  of  to- 
morrow. 

There  have  been  other  aspects  of  her  de- 
sei'ving  of  attention  in  such  a  series,  notably 
her  aspect  as  mother  and  as  educator.  If 
she  has  not  been  shown  as  poet,  as  artist,  as 
scientist,  as  talker  (for  talk  is  a  thing  quite 
as  important  as  poetry  or  science  or  art),  it 
has  not  been  so  much  because  of  an  actual 
lack  of  specific  examples  of  women  distin- 
77 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

guished  in  these  fields  as  because  of  the  un- 
representative character  of  such  examples. 

Here,  then,  is  a  man's  view  of  modern 
woman.  To  complete  that  view,  to  round  off 
that  conception,  I  now  speak  of  Ellen  Key. 

Her  writings  have  had  a  peculiar  career 
in  America,  one  which  perhaps  prevents  a 
clear  understanding  of  their  character.  On 
the  one  hand,  they  have  seemed  to  many  to 
be  radically  "advanced";  to  thousands  of 
middle-class  women,  who  have  heard  vaguely 
of  these  new  ideas,  and  who  have  secretly 
and  strongly  desired  to  know  more  of  them, 
her  "Love  and  Marriage"  has  come  as  a 
revolutionary  document,  the  first  outspoken 
word  of  scorn  for  conventional  morality,  the 
first  call  to  them  to  take  their  part  v  in  the 
breaking  of  new  paths. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  remembered 

that  America  is  the  home  of  Mormonism,  of 

the  Oneida  Community,  of  the  Woodhull 

and  Claflin  "free-love"  movement  of  the 

78 


KLLEN  KEY 

'70s,  of  "Dianism"  and  a  hundred  other 
obscure  but  pen^asive  sexual  cults  —  in 
short,  of  movements  of  greater  or  less  re- 
spectability, capable  of  giving  considerable 
currency  to  their  beliefs.  And  they  have 
given  considerable  currency  to  their  beliefs. 
In  spite  of  the  dominant  tone  of  Puritanism 
in  American  thought,  our  social  life  has  been 
affected  to  an  appreciable  extent  by  these 
beliefs. 

And  these  beliefs  may  be  summed  up 
hastily,  but,  on  the  M'hole,  justlj%  as  material- 
istic —  in  the  common  and  unfavorable  sense. 
They  have  converged,  from  one  direction  or 
another,  upon  the  opinion  that  sex  is  an  ani- 

\  mal  function,  no  more  sacred  than  any  other 
animal  function,  which,  by  a  ridiculous  over- 
estimation,  is  made  to  give  rise  to  jealousy, 

i  unhappiness,  madness,  vice,  and  crime. 

It  is  a  fact  tiiat  the  Puritan  temperament 
readily  finds  this  opinion,  if  not  the  pro- 
gram which  accompanies  it,  acceptable,  as 
79 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

one  may  discover  in  private  conversation 
with  respectable  Puritans  of  both  sexes. 
And  it  is  more  unfortunately  true  that  the 
present-day  rebellion  against  conventional 
morality  in  America  has  found,  in  Hardy 
and  Shaw  and  other  anti-romanticists,  a 
seeming  support  of  this  opinion.  So  that  one 
finds  in  America  today  (though  some  people 
may  not  know  about  it)  an  undercurrent 
of  impatient  materialism  in  matters  of  sex. 
To  become  freed  from  the  inadequate  moral- 
ity of  Puritanism  is,  for  thousands  of  young 
people,  to  adopt  another  morality  which  is, 
if  more  sound  in  many  ways,  certainly  as 
inadequate  as  the  other. 

So  that  Ellen  Key  comes  into  the  lives  of 
many  in  this  country  as  a  conservative  force, 
holding  up  a  spiritual  ideal,  the  ideal  of 
monogamy,  and  defending  it  with  a  breadth 
of  view,  a  sanity,  and  a  fervor  that  make  it 
something  different  from  the  cold  institution 
which  these  readers  have  come  to  despise. 
80 


ELLEN  KEY 

She  makes  every  allowance  for  human  na- 
ture, every  concession  to  the  necessities  of 
temperament,  every  recognition  of  the 
human  need  for  freedom,  and  yet  makes  the 

love  of  one  man  and  one  woman  seem  the 

i 

i  highest  ideal,  a  thing  worth  striving  and 
waiting  and  suffering  for. 

She  cherishes  the  spiritual  magic  of  sex 
as  the  finest  achievement  of  the  race,  and 
sees  it  as  the  central  and  guiding  principle 
in  our  social  and  economic  evolution.  She 
seeks  to  construct  a  new  morality  which  will 
do  what  the  present  one  only  pretends,  and 
with  the  shallowest  and  most  desperately 
pitiful  of  pretenses,  to  do.  She  would  help 
our  struggling  generation  to  form  a  new 
code  of  ethics,  and  one  of  subtle  stringency, 
in  this  most  important  and  difficult  of 
relations. 

Thus  her  writings,  of  which  "Love  and 
Marriage  "  will  here  be  taken  as  representa- 
tive, have  a  twofold  aspect — the  radical  and 
81 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

the  conservative.  But  of  the  two,  the  con- 
servative is  by  far  the  truer.  It  is  as  a 
conservator,  with  too  firm  a  grip  on  reaUty 
to  be  lured  into  the  desertion  of  any  real 
values  so  far  acliieved  bj'^  the  race,  that  she 
may  be  best  considered. 

And  germane  to  her  conservatism,  which 
is  the  true  conservatism  of  her  sex,  is  her 
intellectual  habit,  her  literary  method.  She 
is  not  a  logician,  it  is  true.  She  lacks 
logic,  and  with  it  order  and  clearness  and 
precision,  because  of  the  very  fact  of  her 
firm  hold  on  realities.  The  realities  are  too 
complex  to  be  brought  into  any  completely 
logical  and  orderly  relation,  too  elusive  to 
be  stated  with  utter  precision.  There  is  a 
whole  universe  in  "Love  and  Marriage"; 
and  it  resembles  the  universe  in  its  wildness, 
its  tumultuousness,  its  contradictory  quality. 
Her  book,  like  the  universe,  is  in  a  state  of 
flux  —  it  refuses  to  remain  one  fixed  and 
dead  thing.  It  is  a  book  which  in  spite  of 
82 


ELLEN  KEY 

some  attempt  at  arrangement  may  be  begun 
at  any  point  and  read  in  any  order.  It  is  a 
mixture  of  science,  sociology,  and  mysticism; 
it  has  a  wider  range  than  an  orderly  book 
could  possibly  have ;  it  touches  more  points, 
includes  more  facts,  and  is  more  convincing, 
in  its  queer  way,  than  any  other. 

"Love  and  Marriage"  is  the  Talmud  of 
sexual  morality.  It  contains  history,  wis- 
dom, poetry,  psychological  analysis,  shrewd 
judgments,  generous  sympathies,  .  .  .  and 
it  all  bears  upon  the  creation  of  that  new 
sexual  morality  for  which  in  a  thousand 
ways  —  economic,  artistic,  and  spiritual — 
we  are  so  astonishing  a  mixture  of  readiness 
and  unreadiness. 

Ellen  Key  is  fundamentally  a  conserva- 
tor. But  she  is  careful  about  what  she 
conservates.  It  is  the  right  to  love  which 
she  would  have  us  cherish,  rather  than  the 
right  to  own  another  person  —  the  beauty  of 
singleness  of  devotion  rather  than  the  cruel 
83 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

habit  of  trying  to  force  people  to  carry  out 
rash  promises  made  in  moments  of  exalta- 
tion. She  conserves  the  greatest  things  and 
lets  the  others  go:  motherhood,  as  against 
the  exclusive  right  of  married  women  to 
bear  children;  and  that  personal  passion 
which  is  at  once  physical  and  spiritual  rather 
than  any  of  the  legally  standardized  rela- 
tions. Nor  does  she  hesitate  to  speak  out 
for  the  conservation  of  that  old  custom  which 
persists  among  peasant  and  primitive  peo- 
ples all  over  the  world  and  which  has  been 
reintroduced  to  the  public  by  a  recent  sociol- 
ogist under  the  term  of  "trial  marriage"; 
it  must  be  held,  she  says,  as  the  bulwark 
against  the  corruption  of  prostitution  and 
made  a  part  of  the  new  morality. 

It  is  perhaps  in  this  very  matter  that  her 
attitude  is  capable  of  being  most  bitterly 
resented.  For  we  have  lost  our  sense  of 
what  is  old  and  good,  and  we  give  the  sanc- 
tion of  ages  to  pai'venu  virtues  that  are  as 

84 


ELLEN  KEY 

degraded  as  the  rococo  ornaments  which 
were  born  in  the  same  year.    We  have  (or 
the  Puritans  among  us  have)  lost  all  moral 
sense  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  word,  in 
tliat  we  are  unable  to  tell  good  from  bad  if 
it  be  not  among  the  things  that  were  socially 
respectable  m  the  year  1860.     Ellen  Key 
writes:    "The  most  delicate  test  of  a  per- 
son's sense  of  morality  is  his  power  in  inter- 
preting   ambiguous    signs    in    the    ethical 
sphere;  for  only  the  profoundly  moral  can 
discover  the  dividing  line,  sharp  as  the  edge 
of  a  sword,  between  new  morality  and  old 
immorahty.    In  our  time,  ethical  obtuseness 
betrays  itself  first  and  foremost  by  the  con- 
demnation of  those  young  couples  who  freely 
unite  their  destinies.    The  majority  does  not 
perceive  the  advance  in  morality  which  this 
implies  in  comparison  with  the  code  of  so 
many  men  who,   without   responsibility  — 
and  without  apparent  risk  —  purchase  the 
repose  of  their  senses.     The  free  union  of 
85 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

love,  on  the  other  hand,  gives  them  an 
enhancement  of  life  which  they  consider  that 
they  gain  without  injuring  anyone.  It  an- 
swers to  their  idea  of  love's  chastitj',  an  idea 
which  is  justly  offended  by  the  incomplete- 
ness of  the  period  of  engagement,  with  all 
its  losses  in  the  freshness  and  frankness  of 
emotion.  When  their  soul  has  found  an- 
other soul,  when  the  senses  of  both  have  met 
in  a  common  longing,  then  they  consider  that 
they  have  a  right  to  full  unity  of  love, 
although  compelled  to  secrecy,  since  the 
conditions  of  society  render  early  marriage 
impossible.  They  are  thus  freed  from  a 
wasteful  struggle  which  would  give  them 
neither  peace  nor  inner  purity,  and  which 
would  be  doubly  hard  for  them,  since  they 
have  attained  the  end  —  love  —  for  the  sake 
of  which  self-control  would  have  been 
imposed." 

It    is    almost    impossible   to    quote    any 
passage  from  "Love  and  Marriage"  which 
86 


ELLEN  KEY 

is  not  subject  to  further  practical  modifica- 
tion, or  which  does  not  present  an  incom- 
plete idea  of  which  the  complement  may  be 
found  somewhere  else.  Even  this  passage 
is  one  which  states  a  brief  for  the  younger 
generation  rather  than  the  author's  whole 
opinion.  Still,  with  all  these  limitations,  her 
view  is  one  which  is  so  different  from  that 
commonly  held  by  women  that  it  may  seem 
merely  fantastic  to  hold  it  up  as  an  example 
of  the  conservative  instinct  of  women. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  so.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  view  which  holds  that  the 
chastity  of  unmarried  women  is  well  pur- 
chased at  the  price  of  prostitution,  is  a  mas- 
culine view.  It  is  a  piece  of  the  sinister  and 
cruel  ideahsm  of  the  male  mind,  divorced  (as 
the  male  mind  is  so  capable  of  being)  from 
realities.  No  woman  would  ever  have  cre- 
ated prostitution  to  preserve  the  chastity  of 
part  of  her  sex;  and  the  more  familiar  one 
becomes  with  the  specific  character  of  the 
87 


•  WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

feminine  mind,  the  more  impossible  does  it 
seem  that  women  will,  when  they  have  come 
to  think  and  act  for  themselves,  permanently 
maintain  it.  Nor  will  they  —  one  is  forced 
to  believe  —  hesitate  long  at  the  implications 
of  that  demolition. 

No,  I  think  that  with  the  advent  of 
women  into  a  larger  life  our  jerry-built 
virtues  will  have  to  go,  to  make  room  for 
mansions  and  gardens  fit  to  be  inhabited  by 
the  human  soul. 

It  will  be  like  the  pulling  down  of  a  rotten 
tenement.  First  (with  a  great  shocked  out- 
cry from  some  persons  of  my  own  sex)  the 
facade  goes,  looking  nice  enough,  but  show- 
ing up  for  painted  tin  what  pretended  to 
be  marble;  then  the  dark,  cavelike  rooms 
exposed,  with  their  blood-stained  floors  and 
their  walls  ineffectually  papered  over  the 
accumulated  filth  and  disease;  and  so  on, 
lath  by  lath,  down  to  the  cellars,  with  their 
hints  of  unspeakable  horrors  in  the  dark. 

88 


ELLEN  KEY 

It  is  to  this  conclusion  that  these  chapters 
draw:  That  women  have  a  surer  instinct 
tlian  men  for  the  preservation  of  the  truest 
human  values,  but  that  their  very  acts  of 
conservation  will  seem  to  the  timid  minds 
among  us  like  the  shattering  of  all  virtues, 
the  debacle  of  civilization,  the  Gotterdam- 
merung! 


89 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PREEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

THIS  is  by  way  of  a  postscript.  Dora 
Marsden  is  a  new  figure  in  the  femi- 
nist movement.  Just  how  she  evolved  is 
rather  hard  to  say.  Her  family  were  Rad- 
icals, it  seems,  smug  British  radicals;  and 
she  broke  away,  first  of  all,  into  a  sort  of 
middle  class  socialism.  She  went  into  set- 
tlement work.  Here,  it  seems,  she  discov- 
ered what  sort  of  person  she  really  was. 

She  was  a  lover  of  freedom.  So  of  course 
she  rebelled  against  the  interference  of  the 
middle  class  with  the  affairs  of  the  poor,  and 
threw  overboard  her  settlement  work  and 
her  socialism  together.  She  was  a  believer 
in  woman  suffrage,  but  the  autocratic  gov- 
ernment of  the  organization  irked  her. 
And,  besides,  she  felt  constrained  to  point 
90 


PREEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

out  that  feminism  meant  worlds  more  than 
a  mere  vote.  The  position  of  woman,  not 
indeed  as  the  slave  of  man,  but  as  the  en- 
slaver of  man,  but  with  the  other  end  of 
the  chain  fastened  to  her  own  wrist,  and 
depriving  her  quite  effectually  of  her  lib- 
erties— this  irritated  her.  Independence  to 
her  meant  achievement,  and  when  she  heard 
the  talk  about  "motherhood"  by  which  the 
women  she  knew  excused  their  lack  of 
achievement,  she  was  annoyed.  Finally,  the 
taboo  upon  the  important  subject  of  sex 
exasperated  her.  So  she  started  a  journal 
to  express  her  discontent  with  all  these 
things,  and  to  change  them. 

Naturally,  she  called  her  journal  The 
Freewoman.  "  Independent "  expresses 
much  of  Dora  Marsden's  feeling,  but  that 
word  has  been  of  late  dragged  in  a  mire  of 
pettiness  and  needs  dry  cleaning.  It  has 
come  to  signify  a  woman  who  isn't  afraid  to 
go  out  at  night  alone  or  who  holds  a  position 
91 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

downtown.  A  word  had  to  be  chosen  which 
had  in  it  some  suggestion  of  the  heroic. 
Hence  The  Freewoman. 

The  Freewoman  was  a  weekly.  It  hved 
several  months  and  then  suspended  publi- 
cation, and  now  all  the  women  I  know  are 
poring  over  the  back  numbers  while  waiting 
for  it  to  start  again  as  a  fortnightly.  It  was 
a  remarkable  paper.  For  one  thing,  it 
threw  open  its  colunms  to  such  a  discussion 
of  sex  that  dear  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  wrote 
a  shocked  letter  to  The  Times  about  it.  Of 
course,  a  good  many  of  the  ideas  put  forth 
in  this  correspondence  were  erroneous  or 
trivial,  but  it  must  have  done  the  writers  no 
end  of  good  to  express  themselves  freely. 
For  once  sex  was  on  a  plane  with  other  sub- 
jects, a  fact  making  tremendously  for  san- 
ity. In  this  Miss  Marsden  not  only  achieved 
a  creditable  journalistic  feat,  but  performed 
a  valuable  public  service. 

Her  editorials  were  another  distinctive 
92 


FREEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

thing.  In  the  first  issue  was  an  editorial 
on  "Bondwomen,"  from  which  it  would  ap- 
pear that  perhaps  even  such  advanced  per- 
sons as  you,  my  dear  lady,  are  still  far  from 
free. 

"Bondwomen  are  distinguished  from 
Freewomen  by  a  spiritual  distinction. 
Bondwomen  are  the  women  who  are  not  sep- 
arate spiritual  entities — who  are  not  indi- 
viduals. They  are  complements  merely. 
By  habit  of  thought,  by  form  of  activity, 
and  largely  by  preference,  they  round  off 
the  personality  of  some  other  individual, 
rather  than  create  or  cultivate  their  own. 
Most  women,  as  far  back  as  we  have  any 
record,  have  fitted  into  this  conception,  and 
it  has  borne  itself  out  in  instinctive  working 
practice. 

"And   in    the   midst   of   all   this    there 

comes  a  ciy  that  woman  is  an  individual, 

and  that  because  she  is  an  individual  she 

must  be  set  free.     It  would  be  nearer  the 

93 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

truth  to  say  that  if  she  is  an  individual  she 
is  free,  and  will  act  like  those  who  are  free. 
The  doubtful  aspect  in  the  situation  is  as  to 
whether  women  are  or  can  be  individuals 
— that  is,  free — and  whether  there  is  not 
danger,  under  the  circumstances,  in  label- 
ling them  free,  thus  giving  them  the  liberty 
of  action  which  is  allowed  to  the  free.  It 
is  this  doubt  and  fear  which  is  behind  the 
opposition  which  is  being  offered  the  van- 
guard of  those  who  are  'asking  for'  freedom. 
It  is  the  kind  of  fear  which  an  engineer 
would  have  in  guaranteeing  an  arch  equal 
to  a  strain  above  its  strength.  The  oppo- 
nents of  the  Freewomen  are  not  actuated 
by  spleen  or  by  stupidity,  but  by  dread. 
This  dread  is  founded  upon  ages  of  experi- 
ence with  a  being  who,  however  well  loved, 
has  been  known  to  be  an  inferior,  and  who 
has  accepted  all  the  conditions  of  inferiors. 
Women,  women's  intelligence,  and  women's 
judgments  have  always  been  regarded  with 

94 


PREEWOMBN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

more  or  less  secret  contempt,  and  when 
woman  now  speaks  of  'equality,'  all  the  nat- 
ural contempt  which  a  higher  order  feels  for 
a  lower  order  when  it  presumes  bursts  out 
into  the  open.  This  contempt  rests  upon 
quite  honest  and  sound  instinct,  so  honest, 
indeed,  that  it  must  provide  all  the  charm 
of  an  unaccustomed  sensation  for  fine  gen- 
tlemen like  the  Curzons  and  Cromers  and 
Asquiths  to  feel  anything  quite  so  instinctive 
and  primitive. 

"With  the  women  opponents  it  is  another 
matter.  These  latter  apart,  however,  it  is 
for  would-be  Freewomen  to  realize  that  for 
them  this  contempt  is  the  healthiest  thing 
in  the  world,  and  that  those  who  express  it 
honestly  feel  it;  that  these  opponents  have 
argued  quite  soundly  that  women  have 
allowed  themselves  to  be  used,  ever  since 
there  has  been  any  record  of  them ;  and  that 
if  women  had  had  higher  uses  of  their  own 
they  would  not  have  foregone  them.    They 

95 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

have  never  known  women  to  formulate  im- 
perious wants,  this  in  itself  implying  lack 
of  wants,  and  this  in  turn  implying  lack  of 
ideals.  Women  as  a  whole  have  shown 
nothing  save  'servant'  attributes.  All  those 
activities  which  presuppose  the  master  quali- 
ties, the  standard-making,  the  law-giving, 
the  moral-framing,  belong  to  men.  Relig- 
ions, philosophies,  legal  codes,  standards  in 
morals,  canons  in  art,  have  all  issued  from 
men,  while  women  have  been  the  'followers,' 
'believers,'  the  'law-abiding,'  the  'moral,'  the 
conventionally  admiring.  They  have  been 
the  administrators,  the  servants,  living  by 
borrowed  precept,  receiving  orders,  doing 
hodmen's  work.  For  note,  though  some 
men  must  be  servants,  all  women  are  serv- 
ants, and  all  the  masters  are  men.  That  is 
the  difference  and  distinction.  The  seii'ile 
condition  is  common  to  all  women." 

This  was  only  the  beginning  of  such  a 
campaign  of  radical  propaganda  as  femin- 

96 


FREEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

ism  never  knew  before.  Miss  Marsden 
went  on  to  attack  all  the  things  which  bind 
women  and  keep  them  unfree.  As  such  she 
denounced  what  she  considered  the  cant  of 
"motherhood." 

"  Considering,  therefore,  that  children, 
from  both  physiological  and  psychological 
points  of  view,  belong  more  to  the  woman 
than  to  the  man;  considering,  too,  that  not 
only  does  she  need  them  more,  but,  as  a 
rule,  wants  them  more  than  the  man, 
the  parental  situation  begins  to  present  ele- 
ments of  humor  when  the  woman  proceeds 
to  fasten  upon  the  man,  in  return  for  the 
children  she  has  borne  him,  the  obligation 
from  that  time  to  the  end  of  her  days,  not 
only  for  the  children's  existence,  but  for  her 
own,  also ! " 

When  asked  under  what  conditions,  then, 

women   should    have   children,    she   replied 

that  women  who  wanted  them  should  save 

for  them  as  for  a  trip  to  Europe.     This  is 

97 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

frankly  a  gospel  for  a  minority — a  fact 
which  does  not  invalidate  it  in  the  eyes  of 
its  promulgator — but  she  does  believe  that 
if  women  are  to  become  the  equals  of  men 
they  must  find  some  way  to  have  children 
without  giving  up  the  rest  of  life.  It  has 
been  done! 

Then,  having  been  rebuked  for  her  critical 
attitude  toward  the  woman  suffrage  organi- 
zation, she  showed  herself  in  no  mood  to 
take  orders  from  even  that  source.  She  sub- 
jected the  attitude  of  the  members  of  the 
organization  to  an  examination,  and  found 
it  tainted  with  sentimentalism.  "  Of  all  the 
corruptions  to  which  the  woman's  movement 
is  now  open,"  she  wrote,  "the  most  poison- 
ous and  permeating  is  that  which  flows  from 
sentimentalism,  and  it  is  in  the  W.  S.  P.  U. 
[Women's  Social  and  Political  Union] 
that  sentimentalism  is  now  rampant.  .  .  . 
It  is  this  sentimentalism  that  is  abhorrent 
98 


FRBEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDBN 

to  us.    We  fight  it  as  we  would  fight  pros- 
titution, or  any  other  social  disease." 

She  called  upon  women  to  be  individuals, 
and  sought  to  demolish  in  their  minds  any 
lingering  desire  for  Authority.  "  There  is," 
she  wrote,  "  a  genuine  pathos  in  our  reliance 
upon  the  law  in  regard  to  the  affairs 
of  our  own  souls.  Our  belief  in  ourselves 
and  in  our  impulses  is  so  frail  that  we  prefer 
to  see  it  buttressed  up.  We  are  surer  of 
our  beliefs  when  we  see  their  lawfulness 
symbolized  in  the  respectable  blue  cloth  of 
the  policeman's  uniform,  and  the  sturdy 
good  quality  of  the  prison's  walls.  The  law 
gives  them  their  passport.  Well,  perhaps 
in  this  generation,  for  all  save  pioneers,  the 
law  will  continue  to  give  its  protecting  shel- 
ter, but  with  the  younger  generations  we 
beheve  we  shall  see  a  stronger,  prouder,  and 
more  insistent  people,  surer  of  themselves 
and  of  the  pureness  of  their  own  desires." 
99 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDEftS 

She  did  not  stick  at  the  task  of  formu- 
lating for  women  a  new  moral  attitude  to 
replace  the  old.  "We  are  seeking,"  she 
said,  "  a  morality  which  shall  he  ahle  to  point 
the  way  out  of  the  social  trap  we  find  we 
are  in.  We  are  conscious  that  we  are  con- 
cerned in  the  dissolution  of  one  social  order, 
which  is  giving  way  to  another.  Men  and 
women  are  both  involved,  but  women  dif- 
ferently from  men,  because  women  them- 
selves are  very  different  from  men.  The 
difference  between  men  and  women  is  the 
whole  difference  between  a  religion  and  a 
moral  code.  Men  are  pagan.  They  have 
never  been  Christian.  Women  are  wholly 
Christian,  and  have  assimilated  the  entire 
genius  of  Christianity. 

"  The  ideal  of  conduct  which  men  have 
followed  has  been  one  of  self-realization, 
tempered  by  a  broad  principle  of  equity 
which  has  been  translated  into  practice  by 
means  of  a  code  of  laws.  A  man's  desire 
100 


PREEWOMBN  AND  DORA  MARSDEN 

and  ideal  has  been  to  satisfy  the  wants  which 
a  consciousness  of  his  several  senses  gives 
rise  to.  His  vision  of  attainment  has  there- 
fore been  a  sensuous  one,  and  if  in  his  desire 
for  attainment  he  has  transgressed  the  law, 
his  transgression  has  sat  but  lightly  upon 
him.  A  law  is  an  objective  thing,  laid  upon 
a  man's  will  from  outside.  It  does  not  enter 
the  inner  recesses  of  consciousness,  as  does 
a  religion.  It  is  nothing  more  than  a  body 
of  prohibitions  and  commands,  which  can 
be  obeyed,  transgressed  or  evaded  with  little 
injury  to  the  soul.  With  women  moral  mat- 
ters have  been  wholly  different.  Resting 
for  support  upon  a  religion,  their  moral 
code  has  received  its  sanction  and  force  from 
within.  It  has  thus  laid  hold  on  conscious- 
ness with  a  far  more  tenacious  grip.  Their 
code  being  subjective,  transgression  has 
meant  a  darkening  of  the  spirit,  a  sullying 
of  the  soul.  Thus  the  doctrine  of  self- 
renunciation,  which  is  the  outstanding  fea- 
101 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

ture  of  Christian  ethics,  has  had  the  most 
favorable  circumstances  to  insure  its  reali- 
zation, and  with  women  it  has  won  com- 
pletely—  so  comj^letely  that  it  now  exerts 
its  influence  unconsciously.  Seeking  the 
realization  of  the  will  of  others,  and  not 
their  own,  ever  waiting  upon  the  minds  of 
others,  women  have  almost  lost  the  instinct 
for  self-realization,  the  instinct  for  achieve- 
ment in  their  own  persons." 

Whether  she  is  right  is  a  moot  question. 
Certainly  in  such  matters  as  testimony  in 
court,  the  customs-tariff,  and  the  minor  city 
ordinances,  women  show  no  particular  re- 
spect for  the  law.  Ibsen  sought  in  "The 
Doll's  House"  to  show  that  her  morality 
had  no  connection  with  the  laws  of  the  world 
of  men.  Even  in  matters  of  human  rela- 
tionship it  is  doubtful  if  women  give  any 
more  of  an  "inner  assent"  to  law  than  do 
men.  Woman's  failure  to  achieve  that  dom- 
ination of  the  world  which  constitutes  indi- 
102 


FREEWOMEN  AND  DORA  MARSDBN 

viduality  and  freedom  —  this  Dora  Marsden 
would  explain  on  the  ground  of  a  dulling 
of  the  senses.  It  may  be  more  easily  ex- 
plained as  a  result  of  a  dulling  of  the  imagi- 
nation. The  trouble  is  that  they  are  content 
with  petty  conquests. 

There  you  have  it !  Inevitably  one  argues 
with  Dora  Marsden.  That  is  her  value. 
She  provokes  thought.  And  she  welcomes 
it.  She  wants  everybody  to  think  —  not  to 
think  her  thoughts  necessarily,  nor  the  right 
thoughts  always,  but  that  which  they  can 
and  must.  She  is  a  propagandist,  it  is  true. 
But  she  does  not  create  a  silence,  and  call 
it  conversion. 

She  stimulates  her  readers  to  cast  out  the 
devils  that  inhabit  their  souls  —  fear,  preju- 
dice, sensitiveness.  She  helps  them  to  build 
up  their  lives  on  a  basis  of  will  —  the  exer- 
cise, not  the  suppression,  of  will.  She  indu- 
rates them  to  the  world.  She  liberates  them 
to  life.  She  is  the  Max  Stirner  of  feminism. 
108 


WOMEN  AS  WORLD  BUILDERS 

Freedom!  That  is  the  first  word  and  the 
last  with  Dora  Marsden.  She  makes  women 
understand  for  the  first  time  what  freedom 
means.  She  makes  them  want  to  he  free. 
She  nerves  them  to  the  effort  of  emancipa- 
tion. She  sows  in  a  fertile  soil  the  dragon's 
teeth  which  shall  spring  up  as  a  band  of 
capable  females,  knowing  what  they  want 
and  taking  it,  asking  no  leave  from  any- 
body, doing  things  and  enjoying  life  — 
Freewomen ! 


104 


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